Allowing food companies to put nutrition claims on their products may run counter to health promotion efforts - BMC Series blog

Allowing food companies to put nutrition claims on their products may run counter to health promotion efforts - BMC Series blog

Gary Sacks

Associate Professor Gary Sacks is a Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow based at the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University. Gary’s research focuses on policies for the prevention of obesity and related diseases. Gary has co-authored several international reports on obesity prevention, including the Lancet Commission on Obesity and various reports for the World Health Organization.

Allowing food companies to put nutrition claims on their products may run counter to health promotion efforts

A systematic review recently published in BMC Public Health looks at the influence of nutrition claims on food packaging with the aim to understanding how they contribute to overweight and obesity. In this blog, author Gary Sacks tells us more about his work and the implications of the results.

Gary Sacks 5 Dec 2019

Flickr: Alex Vilomara

Nutrition claims (such as “low in fat” or “sugar free”) on food packaging may lead people to increase their consumption of those products and their overall energy intake. When unhealthy products are allowed to carry these claims it may contribute to unhealthy diets and obesity. Policy makers should therefore consider restricting the use of nutrition claims on packaged foods as part of broader efforts to improve population diets.