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Despite several years’ experience of Agency press coverage, it still amazes me that a piece of research that was purely to inform our thinking on how a consumer campaign might look further down the line, can lead to total fallacies about the Food Standards Agency planning to slap ‘scary’ labels and pictures on cheese sandwiches! According to The Grocer magazine, we’re asking manufacturers of high saturated fat foods to put cigarette box-style warnings on packs. Vanessa Feltz in the Daily Express takes it one step further, adding that we’ll be plastering pictures of clogged arteries on cheese sandwiches!
To put the record completely straight – we have not, and have never, said we’d put health warnings on any food.
Yes, before creating a campaign, we set out to find out what the public will find most useful – and that means testing a range of messages and listening to what people tell us. As part of this exploration to determine what will and won’t work, an ‘enjoy responsibly’ approach was trialled and people very clearly told us they wouldn’t want to see that – we totally agree. Incidentally, it was during this research that people told us shock tactics would be effective to change their behaviour, though, from experience, we’re not convinced this will work best. In developing the best way to engage consumers, we also involved major players in the food industry and consumer organisations.
Frustratingly, that’s not what happened according to most of the papers over the past few days.
As for cheese, it does seem we have this battle too often. On our eatwell website we talk about the benefits of dairy products and recommend people should eat them – not quite the voice of an organisation that demonises cheese. But let’s face facts here – full fat cheese is high in saturated fat. Some of our previous research indicates people are not aware of that, so what’s the problem in making sure people get that message? It’s a shame some media report such unhelpful and inaccurate stories.
It’s disappointing to, yet again, have to reiterate that the Agency does not demonise foods – we never call one food ‘bad’ and another ‘good’. The eatwell plate is a tool we use to literally illustrate to people that we can enjoy a little of everything you fancy – we just need to think about which foods we enjoy as a treat.
Whether or not people want to hear this, a diet too high in saturated fat can lead to potentially fatal heart disease. That’s why we take our responsibility to give people honest information about food very seriously. We apologise if that doesn’t go down too well with some people, but it is our job and we will keep on doing it.
