During my vacation in Sri Lanka in the end of October, we were shopping at Keells Departmental Store, the Lankan equivalent of our Nilgiris or Spencer’s. I was particularly intrigued to see the front-of-pack communication in all food items that mentioned sugar, salt and fat, in 3 languages (Sinhala, Tamil and English). These 3 items were mentioned as a part of 100gms and given that these 3 were isolated, it seemed easier to make a choice based on those numbers.
In Indian food items, these are part of a longer list of ingredients and ‘nutrition facts/information (per 100gms)’ behind the pack, usually in fine-print.
What Nestle has done in Europe goes several steps forward, and surprisingly so! Nestle has adopted a standard called , a voluntary front-of-pack scheme that classifies foods and beverages according to their nutritional profile. It is a color-coded system with a scale ranging from A (healthier choices) to E (less healthy choices)! More than 5000 products from Nestle, in five European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland) will feature Nutri-Score.
This is unbelievable because you see both ‘A’ and ‘E’ in their products now! It was so wonderful to see a brand voluntarily label a product like Kit-Kat as ‘E’ on the front of the pack!
I went through Nestle’s India website to see what they up to here and was pleasantly surprised to see them trying, within the local regulations, in . Yes, ‘decode’ was the word given how wonderfully confusing they all are, by design.
Ideally, Governments should enforce such standards and labelling on food items. In India, it should be the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) that should be enforcing such standards, but they do not. I’d love to see them taking note of Nestle’s voluntary effort in Europe and bring this to India. Once we have this, if people still buy an E-rated product (which would be most chocolates in India), then it is entirely their choice… and their right to do so.