The Food Standards Agency has published the latest report of people's views on food labels and their awareness and understanding of front-of-pack nutrition labelling. This is part of a nationwide series of 'citizens' forums' set up to establish a dialogue with the public on food.
A series of focus groups, conducted in England and Scotland in September and October 2009, found that awareness of front-of-pack labelling was high and was viewed to be important, in particular as a way to save time and make informed healthy choices.
The forum members felt that a single approach to front-of-pack nutrition labelling would be more user friendly. They found the co-existence of different schemes made comparisons between retailers and brands more difficult and caused some confusion about the trustworthiness of the information provided on front-of-pack labels.