Traffic Light Food Labels

The UK Nutritional Labelling System is making shopping for healthy foods much more transparent. Using a sort of traffic light line of thinking, it incorporates the familiar colors of red, amber and green to highlight the good and bad qualities in food items. For instance, a box of cereal that is low in fats will be green in that category but high in sugars will be red. Since salt may reside somewhere in between, it will be labeled with amber.

A clever and intuitive approach, the UK Nutritional Labelling System was launched this week by Public Health Minister Anna Soubry. Companies such as PepsiCo, Nestlé and Mars have agreed to use it as well as all the major UK retailers.