http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20914685

Consider how much prices have gone up, how you're generally paying much more for much less (even the cardboard's laughable on a cereal box, never mind finding you're only getting half the box), and that the basics often don't taste or last as well as they used to.

It's the old bullsh1t about changing laws rather than changing attitudes. Oh, and if a bunch of companies who fund our events do very well out of it, that's just a coincidence

All stick & no carrot hardly ever works but I've never seen a government that seems to understand that...

I appreciate but how would you apply a carrot in this case? They should start with better labelling. Let customers see how bad Frosties are for you. Then over time look at regulations on salt and sugar content, no need to tax it yet.

Listen here Miliband. If I choose to eat fatty or sugary foods, that's my choice. I don't need the likes of you to force me into eating what you think I should eat.

Yes but they have ulterior motives and that is to cut obesity so that they can slash NHS spending no matter what party you vote for. All the parties are in hock to the rich and what they want goes. Personally Frosties are lovely but I do not eat them because I know how loaded in sugar they are. Just make sure that there is a decent food labelling system that is not designed by the industry in a way to deceive us and it will be a start.

Reducing the amount of addictive elements would be a good start. A lot of the "flavour enhancers" have an addictive quality, meaning people eat more than they need to.

Really? That's interesting. I thought cocaine was banned several decades ago in human food, and more recently in pet food. I've never heard of any other addictive ingredients apart from sugar.

Do you have examples or references?


I thought we already had one. At least, all the products in my cupboard are clearly labelled showing how much of you RDA each portion contains.

For example, this here pack of Cadbury's Bournville:

1 portion is 4 chunks

125 Kcal out of 2000
14.4g sugars out of 90
6.8g fat out of 70
etc etc...

The areas in which it contains a high amount are highlighted in red

I don't know how much clearer they could be?

So - let's see if I have this right. Say they limit the amount of sugar in, say, Frosties. That's Ok, because people will just spoon an extra helping of sugar onto their bowl to compensate. How's that going to help?

Yes, controlling what I goes into food will help, but it's not got g to stop people overrating. It is simplistic to say that it's just greed. The may be other factors that make the person fat. I know someone who has anxiety problems, and this person feels she is ver weight. She went to the doctor, was put n a course of Prozac to help restore endorphin levels, and guess what - she's losing weight with very little dietary adjustment. Controlling weight is more than just limiting food intake. Hectoring from the government won't help.

A quick Google suggests MSG as a candidate. I'm not entirely convinced though; glutamates appears naturally in many tasty things such as tomatoes which are generally considered healthy:
http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/De ... _Glutamate

The same is true of sugar, which makes me wonder what the relative levels are. Most natural foods are harmful when consumed in excessive amounts. The same article suggests that amounts of MSG added are small:

As above, it's all about habits. As a kid we sometimes had cornflakes and weetabix. What was our natural instinct? Add sugar. To this day, I cannot eat breakfast cereals without adding sugar (if they're not already loaded eg cocopops, wheetos, frosties). Consequently I just don't eat them (I will have porridge but still have to add berries to it). I now will have either low fat yoghurt (which still has some sugar in it already) or scrambled eggs (where I use two squirts of cooking spray).

When advising patients I often suggest making small subtle changes rather than drastic ones. Go for semi-skimmed milk rather than full fat. Switch to a stronger tasting cheese but have less. Switch to a low fat spread instead of butter. Be weary of nuts (people seem to eat loads when "dieting") etc. This is far more effective because the chanes are small and done over a long period of time.

Awareness of "healthy" options is better but needs to be uniform for fair comparison. I've seen two identical sized ready meals where one displays nutrition per 100g and the other per portion. The latter is for two people but the former is for one person! Makes it more difficult to work out which is more nutritious and it needs to be something you can do "at a glance".

This. We don't just need standardisation of display of nutritional information, we need standardisation of measurement of nutritional information. I've even seen boxed sandwiches that have the nutritional data in big letters then 'per half packet' in tiny letters. Who eats half of a sandwich they've bought?

All nutritional information listed on a pack should be for the amount of whatever-it-is that a person would reasonably be expected to eat if given it. That means (for example) pretty much everything in most supermarket's 'lunch item cooler' section should have nutritional information for the whole of whatever is in the packet, because that's what most people are going to assume is one portion. For a large pizza that would be half, for a small one possibly the whole thing. For a pack of say four muffins, it's one muffin. The whole trick of putting nutritional info for some small part of a packet of stuff that nobody would actually be satisfied with to make it appear to be healthier food than it is needs to be outlawed. It's basically fraud, because they're tricking people into making wrong decisions in the name of profit.

You're suggesting that if a pack says for example "100 Kcal per serving. Pack contains 4 servings" or "100 Kcal per 100g. Pack contains 400g" then people are too stupid to realise that means 400 Kcal per pack..?

If people don't know what they are eating, then it's because they don't care enough to look. Making small changes to the labelling is never going to change that.

Incidentally, your idea of "1 portion" of pizza is absolutely massive compared to my definition. I'd expect a large pizza to serve 4 if not 6, depending on just how large it is. Half a large pizza would not fit on a plate by itself, let alone with all the salads on the side.

If you're looking at one box in isolation, it's less of an issue. I find it more problematic when comparing say two items of food made perhaps by different brands. Even the way you've written it JJW009 is far clearer than on some of the labels I've encountered. Let's take your example.

Item 1: Per serving (contains 2 servings) Energy - 100kcals
Item 2: Per 100g Energy - 70kcals (somewhere else on the item is the weight 284g)

Item 1 tells me that a portion has 100kcals. Item 2 tells me that the entire thing is ~ 200kcals (which I've have had to estimate as 210kcals) but then doesn't tell me the serving/portion size.

When I was in uni, I could easily eat a standard 12" frozen pizza in one sitting. That's six slices and easily fits on to my (standard sized) plates. What I never realised was that you were only ever supposed to eat half the bloody thing! It never occurred to me that it had two servings. Looking at the box at the time, it had nutritional info per 100g and per 1/2 pizza but then didn't state anywhere that 1/2 pizza = 1 portion. This was before I became a bit more savvy about what I was eating.

IMO all boxes should have info per 100g, per serving and state the number of servings. They should also be realistic. As above, who buys half a sandwich? Plus quite often you can't "re-seal" it to save the other half for say tomorrow.

When it comes to portion sizes, I think it's often the consumer that should be more realistic.

Many people would eat several portions of pizza and call it a meal, rather than one portion of pizza along with salads for a balanced meal.

This 200g chocolate bar says 4 pieces is a 125 Kcal serving, but I've known people that would eat the entire thing in one go - that's 1010 Kcal and 2 days worth of sugar!

It swings both ways IMO. As above, I hadn't realised a Goodfellas Pizza was two servings but now we have it alongside some healthier food and only as a treat. On the other hand, I've seen 500ml bottles of drink (squash/fizzy pop) contain "2 servings" whereas a can of the same stuff would be one serving. Ditto with ready made lasange - a single carton may have have two portions or one portion despite being the same size. This can fool people into thinking about what the portion size (in dimensions) should be.