What does a nutritionist or dietitian need to know about the NEW front of pack nutrition labelling ?

Three things you need to know

1. New approach to the look of FoP

The scheme combines the use of red, amber and green colour coding and percentage reference intakes, alongside the amounts of energy, fat, saturated fat (saturates),sugars and salt in a defined portion of food.

2. Criteria for amber fat changed

Take a look at the new criteria and compare them with the previous FSA criteria

The amber fat criteria is reduced from 20g/100g to 17.5g/100g

3. Sugars changed now total sugars and criteria changed

Finally take a look at sugars, there has been a lot of debate about how sugars, the green, amber and red colour coding is based completely on total sugars. This is in line with FIC. When there are no added sugars in a food a claim ‘with no added sugars’ can be added along with ‘contains naturally occurring sugars’.

Hope this helps you focus on the changes. For more technical information you can read the technical guidance.

The recently published UK Foodcomp nutrient analysis reports can now be found at the links below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nutrient-analysis-of-processed-foods-including-trans-fats

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nutrient-analysis-of-fish

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nutrient-analysis-of-eggs

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nutrient-analysis-of-fruit-and-vegetables

We are offering courses in April – why not come and join us and have some fun and learn at the same time.

http://www.nutritionandwellbeing.co.uk/training/

I’ve been following the web traffic on out of home calories, and there isn’t very much. In these times of financial austerity in the UK I figure that we have more to think about than the number of calories that we are eating. Strangely our American cousins are really beginning to buzz about calories on the menu. Some people like it, some people don’t but most people are noticing that the information is there.

We need to know what we’re eating but so often its presented in a really boring fashion. No wonder people get turned off, lts make food and knowing about what we’re eating fun. After all we are what we eat.

The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition will be publishing a new report in the next few days. One recommendation will be that it would be best to keep meat intake, that’s all meat intake, below 70g per day. We don’t know exactly know what the report will say, however a taster was written up in the Telegraph on Sunday. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8335986/Eat-less-red-meat-Government-scientists-warn.html

I know from my own work that there are good reasons to keep meat intake  low, this will reduce the risk of cancer, particularly but not exclusively bowel cancer. This semi- vegetarian  approach could also be seen as a more sustainable option but not everyone would agree.  It will be interesting to hear what SACN recommend. Whatever the recommendations are you can be sure that they have been well researched.

Can our salt taste buds be fooled into thinking that food is more salty than it is? The New Scientist published an article about this last week. 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927994.000-taste-bud-trickery-needed-to-cut-salt-intake.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

As a population it would be much better for us to eat less salt and lose our ‘salt tooth’ than to fool our taste buds. Dextran molecules may be harmless thickeners but surely we want less additives in our food rather than more.

Heston Blumenthal made worm pizza for children at Alder Hey Hospital. What a great idea. I’m not sure that they’ll eat worms everyday thought. One thing that Heston should avoid is trying to sound knowledgeable about nutrition. In the Sunday Times today (6th February 2011) he tells us that cheese pizza, with baked beans doesn’t contain any protein. Think again Heston…. yes it may look unapetising but it does contain protein.Too much strach also makes you lethargic and ends in loosing interest in food .. an interesting theory but not accurate. Heston’s food is great but if he needs nutrition info let’s hope he asks someone who knows …..

NHS wastes millions was the Times headline yesterday. At Nutrition and Wellbeing we are proud to have been able to help the NS save money by reviewing procurement.  Last year we helped the NHS save £140,000 – annually recurring. We specialise in reviewing clinical nutrition spending.

Yesterday the public health white paper was published, alongside it the review of the regulatory framework for public health professionals was published. Sue Lloyd was part of the regulatory review team, if you are interested in the outcome of the review you can read it here

  Review of the regulatory framework for public health professionals

A controversial government programme which gives fast-food chains influence over healthy eating policies has come under severe criticism after US research revealed the extent of “relentless marketing” of unhealthy food and drinks to children. A report by the authoritative Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found companies such as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Burger King spent more than $4bn advertising predominantly unhealthy fast foods in 2009.

For the full article: http://ind.pn/eYoZ0B

Source: National Health Forum- enews