The nutritional quality of foods carrying health-related claims in Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Backgroung/Objectives:Compares the nutritional quality of pre-packaged foods carrying health-related claims with foods that do not carry health-related claims.Subject/Methods:Cross-sectional survey of pre-packaged foods available in Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia and the United Kingdom in 2013. A total of 2034 foods were randomly sampled from three food store types (a supermarket, a neighbourhood store and a discounter). Nutritional information was taken from nutrient declarations present on food labels and assessed through a comparison of mean levels, regression analyses and the application of a nutrient profile model currently used to regulate health claims in Australia and New Zealand (Food Standards Australia New Zealand's Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion, FSANZ NPSC).Results:Foods carrying health claims had, on average, lower levels, per 100 g, of the following nutrients, energy—29.3 kcal (P<0.05), protein—1.2 g (P<0.01), total sugars—3.1 g (P<0.05), saturated fat—2.4 g (P<0.001), and sodium—842 mg (P<0.001), and higher levels of fibre—0.8 g (P<0.001). A similar pattern was observed for foods carrying nutrition claims. Forty-three percent (confidence interval (CI) 41%, 45%) of foods passed the FSANZ NPSC, with foods carrying health claims more likely to pass (70%, CI 64%, 76%) than foods carrying nutrition claims (61%, CI 57%, 66%) or foods that did not carry either type of claim (36%, CI 34%, 38%).Conclusions:Foods carrying health-related claims have marginally better nutrition profiles than those that do not carry claims; these differences would be increased if the FSANZ NPSC was used to regulate health-related claims. It is unclear whether these relatively small differences have significant impacts on health.

Conflicting Messages on Food and Beverage Packages: Front-of-Package Nutritional Labeling, Health and Nutrition Claims in Brazil

“…Nutrition claims were indeed the most prevalent type of claim found in the Brazilian packaged food supply, covering almost a third of the assessed products as found in other countries [19][20][21]36,37]. Health claims were also quite prevalent and were found in 22% of the assessed products.…”

“…Nutrition claims were found in 32% of the sweetened dairy products, whereas health claims were found in 34% of the same products. In a study conducted in five European countries, nutrition and/or health claims were found in 46% of the dairy products-the largest proportion among the studied products [19].…”

“…Considering much of the existing evidence is available for high-income countries [18][19][20][21][22], our paper contributes to the literature by showing the prevalence of nutrition, health, and environment-related claims in the food supply of a large middle-income country; and whether foods that carry those claims can be considered healthy.…”

Assessing nutrition and other claims on food labels: a repeated cross-sectional analysis of the Canadian food supply

“…A second limitation is the approach used to classify nutrition claims. For example, this study classified both nutrient content claims and health claims as nutrition claims; however, other studies have used an international standardized nutrition labelling taxonomy to overcome the differences between regulations among countries [58][59][60][61], which can facilitate multi-country comparisons in the use of nutrition-related claims. FLIP 2013 did not capture products sold in value chain retailers, convenience stores and neighborhood stores, therefore some products available for purchase were probably missed, which might have included specialty products.…”

“…In the end, different types of claims have been studied worldwide [3,24,[58][59][60][61][62][63], although their impact on consumers' health may be small [9]. Perhaps this is because claims are being used more as a marketing strategy by manufacturers [9].…”