August’s Paper of the Month is from the Public Health Nutrition and is entitled: ‘Monitoring the changes to the nutrient composition of fast foods following the introduction of menu labelling in New South Wales, Australia: an observational study’ by Lyndal Wellard-Cole, Wendy L Watson and Clare Hughes.
Health claims and nutrition content claims are marketing tools on food labels used to promote a product’s supposed health or nutritional benefit. Nutrition content claims simply relate to the presence or absence of a nutrient, for example ‘contains calcium’ while health claims link a nutrient or food component with a health effect, such as ‘contains calcium for strong bones’.
In Australia, health claims regulation has been the subject of ongoing discussion between the food industry, consumer and public health groups and the government for over 20 years. In 2013, a new food labelling standard was finally introduced to regulate the use of these claims. The Australian New Zealand Food Standards Code requires products carrying claims to contain the nutrient that is being claimed at the level it is claiming (for example, a 98% fat free food must have 2% fat or less). Additionally, products carrying health claims must meet minimum nutrition requirements defined by the Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criteria (NPSC), and there must be sufficient scientific evidence substantiating the relationship between the nutrient and the health effect.
We conducted research in 2010, prior to the introduction of the regulations, to investigate the types of claims being made on three product categories – breakfast cereals, cereal bars and non-alcoholic drinks. As part of this study, we used the NPSC to determine how many of the products carrying claims met the NPSC, to establish the impact the then draft regulations would have on the three categories.
In 2016, we repeated the study to investigate the impact that implementation of the regulation actually had on the number of products carrying claims, the types of claims and how many products with claims met the NPSC. In the case of health claims, this also highlighted the proportion of these products that potentially breached the regulations by carrying claims without meeting the NPSC.
We found that after the new standard was introduced, there were significantly more products carrying claims in all three categories. Of the products carrying claims, there were higher proportions of products carrying nutrition content claims and health claims, though the increase in the proportion of products with nutrition content claims was the most marked. Concerningly, we also found that more than a third of products carrying health claims did not meet the NPSC – meaning they were potentially breaching the regulations.
Australian consumers are exposed to large numbers of claims on food labels designed to influence their food choices and purchasing decisions. Because consumers tend to perceive nutrition content and health claims in the same manner based on implied health benefits, we concluded that the NPSC should be applied to all foods with claims, to allow only healthier foods to carry nutrition content claims. This will ensure that consumers are not misled by assuming a food is healthy based solely on its claims.
Want to learn more about health claims? Why not register for this NSTA webinar which looks at some of the myths used in marketing of foods, ingredients and supplements, considering the underpinning physiology before assessing the validity and compatibility of the claims with current UK legislation.