In a May 6 press launch, the Italian authorities overtly criticized an upcoming report of the World Health Organisation intended to provide guiding ideas and a framework for the front-of-% vitamins labeling so that you can sell a wholesome weight loss program.
This press launch is not trivial for the reason that it takes place properly before the assembly of the Codex Alimentarius (Food Code) committee, in order to be held in Ottawa from May 13 to 17. Created in 1963 by way of United Nations Food and Agriculture Administration and the WHO, the Codex Alimentarius is fixed of requirements meant to “protect fitness from the purcha
sers” and “to sell honest practices as regards trade of foodstuffs”.
Serge Hercberg, Chantal Julia, Manon Egnell and Pilar Galan, researchers in public health vitamins, were part of the group that evolved the Nutri-Score front-of-% nutrients label adopted in France, Belgium and Spain and currently being discussed in many European international locations. In this article, they decipher for The Conversation the motives of Italy’s incredibly uncommon diplomatic offensive.
The context of the press release
In many nations, discussions are underway regarding a front-of-p.C. The label that provides real transparency on the nutritional quality of meals and might, for this reason, help manual clients towards healthier picks. Such labels are strongly supported through public-health government and additionally customer associations around the arena. But many commercial lobbies don’t forget that such labeling might be opposite to their monetary hobbies and are as a consequence are opposed to the measure.
Despite the big assist of purchasers for such labels and much clinical research showing their effectiveness, the Italian government has these days carried out a method of active competition aiming at preventing the deployment – especially in Europe – of colored the front-of-p.C. Vitamins labels.
The maximum latest act to this point is an try to stress the continued choice-making method within the Codex Alimentarius. Indeed, the Codex isn’t always a passive document but the legal reference for the change disputes between the nations. Its contents can as a consequence affect in a durable way public regulations on nutrition in many nations.
Food labeling: scientific or a “political idea”?
In his reputable assertion, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, everlasting consultant of Italy on the WHO, asserted that “nutrient profiles supposed to classify meals is a political idea with none clinical base.”
For public-fitness experts, this argument is both magnificent and unacceptable. Unacceptable because, to aid his assertion, the ambassador makes the connection with an opinion of the EFSA posted extra than a decade in the past, and denies the evidence from numerous studies which have hooked up the theoretical framework and the dependable techniques to determine and validate nutrient profiles. These profiles reflect no longer simplest the nutritional great of foods, but also the global dietary satisfactory of diets at individual ranges.
Numerous research has shown that nutrient profiles of foods consumed at person stage had been associated with health consequences. Also, current research has established the profiling gadget underpinning the Nutri-Score.
Contrary to Gian Lorenzo Cornado’s assertion, the concept of nutrient profiles is based on medical evidence that constitutes the spine of the WHO report that he attacks. The Italian authorities’ approach is certainly supposed to defend sure financial hobbies and does now not bear in mind the hobby of customers and the significance of public fitness.
Why this mindset of the Italian authorities
For his “demonstration,” the ambassador uses the example of the United Kingdom’s “site visitors mild” meals-labeling device, adopted in 2013. He argues that three hundred and sixty-five days after their roll-out on a voluntary foundation, a “dramatic lower within the sales of all the maximum normal Italian quality foods” turned into discovered. He, for this reason, concludes that “it’s miles a clean demonstration that systems based totally on nutrient profiles do no longer cause healthier selections and penalize conventional Italian foods.”
But this reasoning does no longer preserve: that a meal is “traditional,” “normal” or “gastronomical” does now not suggest that it is nutritionally superior and can be fed on without restrict. “Quality meals” isn’t always synonymous with “wholesome food” – exceptional consists of more than a few dimensions, together with the nature of the ingredients, its sensorial properties (flavor, fragrance and extra), its rooting inside the culinary traditions of a country and also dietary great. By definition, a nutrient profile worries handiest the sort of dimensions, nutrition. And a meals’ nutritional pleasant is absolutely the primary one to do not forget while one is interested in the impact of foods on health.
A ban on foods which might be too fatty or too salty?
Informing purchasers on the fact of the nutritional exceptional of traditional ingredients does now not prevent the fact that they may be eating up – it’s miles in no manner a “ban.” It best shows that consumers should consider the frequency and amount that they should devour.
Traditional Italian cheeses (which includes Parmesan or Gorgonzola) or processed meats (like Parma ham, prosciuttos, coppas, and different salamis) are delicious… but they’re also high in saturated fats and salt and have an excessive caloric density. And the identical is proper of their equivalents in France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and different nations. Such merchandise can be a part of a wholesome food plan. However, they should no longer be overconsumed. Even olive oil, which has nutritive traits and is an advocated choice for oils, is by using definition one hundred% fats and thus can’t be consumed at will.
