There is talk of governmental pressure to force the tobacco industry to reduce the nicotine content of cigarettes. This fundamental disruption of the basic manufacture and presentation of cigarettes indicates the seriousness with which this is seen to affect health - this is because intense health warnings, heavy taxation, and restrictive advertising have failed to impact on the habit. If the supply to the public seems bound to continue then the product must change.
The food industry presents to the public a massive spectrum of manufactured goods, very many of which are bad for health. The public is constantly informed of what things in these good they should avoid - sugars, preservatives, salt and some fats. Their presence or otherwise is usually lost in small writing on the packaging or an inference might be inferred by some colour coding scheme.
What I want to see is on all packaged food and all fresh food is a big label that says it is healthy on an easily understandable scale determined by the medical profession, food scientists and nutritionists who are not paid by the food industry.
This means a person who picks up packet of Kellogs Special K will see in an instant, for this will be printed big and unmissable by the product’s name, if this is healthy and if so the manner and amount that should be eaten. It might rate this product badly but this would not matter if it indicated that little harm would occur if no more than a teaspoon was taken each day. Thus the coding would infer goodness, and the safe serving. It might indicate the ideal preparation. This type of coding would not be welcome by the food industry but at least it would not immediately blackball the product.
Many Kellogs products bear close scrutiny as their persuasive advertising can blind one to adverse components.
The real chore now is to get some real thinking into evaluating the effect of the individual components on health and the compilation of the scoring and coding system and it enforcement on packaging and labelling.
