The legislation regarding nutritional and health claims is counterproductive and prevents the retail trade from easily and clearly helping consumers make healthier choices. The government, parliament, and responsible authorities should act to change this.
The legislation regarding nutritional and health claims is counterproductive and prevents the retail trade from easily and clearly helping consumers make healthier choices. The government, parliament, and responsible authorities should act to change this.
The fact that fruits and vegetables are healthy and good for health feels like an established truth for many. But are we allowed to communicate this in our stores? The answer is no. We face the same challenge when it comes to the sugar and salt content of products. If we have reduced the amount of sugar and salt in a product by a fifth, we want to inform our consumers about this on the packaging. Are we allowed to do that? The answer is no.
Counterproductive legislation prevents stores from informing about healthy choices
The legislation regarding nutritional and health claims is a tangled and tricky story. Unfortunately, it is even the case that the regulation on nutritional and health claims (1924/2006) is in some parts directly counterproductive when it comes to how customers can be informed about what is healthy regarding food and ingredients.
The legislation ties the hands of both the retail trade and food producers and ultimately has consequences for you as a consumer. We want to be able to inform you that this product is good for your health, to help you make healthier choices. We want to be able to tell you when we have reduced the sugar and salt content in a product and emphasize that fruits and vegetables are healthy, as we are aware that our consumption of fruits and vegetables is insufficient.
Where do we set the boundaries for what we are allowed and not allowed to say?
To be able to say that we have reduced the sugar content in a product, it must be reduced by 30 percent. For salt, the limit is 25 percent. If we have reduced both sugar and salt by 20 percent in a product, as a result, we are unable to include this information on the packaging, which means we miss the chance to inform you about it
Navigating health and nutritional claims is equally complex. A nutritional claim, such as stating that a product is high in fiber, is regulated to ensure accuracy. For example, "Carrot is rich in fiber" is an acceptable claim. Regarding health claims, the EU has established a list of approved statements for various nutrients, specifying exactly how they can be expressed. For instance, "Carrot contains dietary fiber. Dietary fiber helps to increase stool volume." Not very enticing, right? However, if we were allowed to simply say that carrots are healthy and encourage people to eat more because they are good for health, perhaps more customers would add a bag of carrots to their shopping carts.
Time for change
Over the years, we at Axfood have reduced both the sugar and salt content in hundreds of our own products. We also offer hundreds of products that we know are beneficial for health and would like to share more about, but regulations restrict us. The question is, how will you, as a consumer, learn about these changes if we are not allowed to communicate them?
While it is crucial that health claims are relevant and scientifically based, we believe it should be easier for entrepreneurs and producers to communicate both healthy choices and reductions in salt and sugar.
The Keyhole – a good choice for your health
Even though we can't always be straightforward about health claims and reductions in sugar and salt, there is still an easy way for you as a customer to make healthy choices: the Keyhole (nyckelhålsmärkning) It is the only approved "health label" that exists today.
The Keyhole brand is managed by the Swedish Food Agency, and Keyhole-labeled food contains less sugar, salt, and saturated fat as well as more fiber and whole grains. The criteria for labeling a product with the Keyhole are based on the latest comprehensive research on what we need to eat to stay healthy. If you choose to consume more Keyhole-labeled foods and vary your diet throughout the week, eating healthily doesn't have to be complicated, and you can quickly improve your eating habits.
Axfood is working on to ensure that more products in our assortment become Keyhole-labeled. We achieve this by adjusting the recipes for existing goods and adding new goods to our assortment. This is why we, along with our industry colleagues, emphasize the importance of the Keyhole label. However, we would also like to see more resources and increased efforts from the Swedish Food Agency to promote the Keyhole label more extensively, making it more recognizable and encouraging more people to choose Keyhole-labeled products.
Concrete proposals to promote improved public health
In the report "Food 2030", Axfood has presented concrete proposals to politicians and authorities to, among other things, reduce or abolish VAT on sustainability-labeled goods (proposal 6), clearly invest in marketing and strengthening the Keyhole label (proposal 7), facilitate simpler communication of reduced sugar and salt content (22), and give the Swedish Food Agency the task of developing national limit values for sugar and salt (21). By implementing them, it would become significantly easier for both us in the trade and food producers to highlight healthy food and contribute to improved public health.
Helena Björck, dietitian at Axfood
