This portion recommendation for savoury snacks was agreed in close cooperation with CIAA.
In defining portions for snacks and for nuts, ESA aims to ensure that
- Portions are compatible with existing dietary recommendations; and
- Portions reflect consumer behaviour
The savoury snacks industry is committed to providing consumers with clear and simple nutrition information that they need in order to be able to make an informed choice. The ESA supports the use of Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs) on-pack as the most useful and objective way of doing this.
While nutrition information provided per 100g (100ml) helps the consumer compare the nutrient content of different kinds of foodstuffs in general, it fails to provide information on the actual nutrient content the consumer intends to consume. Providing nutrition information on a per portion basis empowers consumers to choose a healthy, balanced diet. In this way, consumers can decide if consumption of the whole pack, or of the portion suggested on the pack of that particular food, is appropriate for them.
Industry Practice
- Where more than one portion is included in a pack then we encourage our members to inform consumers of this and declare the number of portions a pack contains.
- Packaging sizes for savoury snacks in Europe currently range from 10g to 300g. Bags exceeding 50 g are considered for sharing or consumption on several eating occasions.
- Currently used portions or portion recommendations range from 10-50g, with a majority of sizes falling already in the 20-30g range.
- ESA has issued the following recommendation to members as regards single serve packs which may have portions that deviate from the reference portion.
- Single-portion packages should be defined as those products weighing 50g or less that are designed to be eaten in a single occasion.
- For all individually wrapped and sold items up to 50g the nutrition information provided should be based on the actual product weight.
- Any single-portion package of more than 50g (and all multiservepacks) should be labelled based on the reference serving size of 30g for snacks and nuts.
- To illustrate this :
- a 40g pack of potato crisps would be considered a single serve pack and nutrition information provided on-pack per 40g and per 100g
- a 120g pack of potato crisps would be considered for sharing or eating on more than one occasion. Nutrition information should be provided per 30g and per 100g with the sharing intent showing that the pack contains 4 x 30g portions;
- where the pack weight is not an exact multiple of 30g the number of portions should be expressed as being between x and y portions, e.g. for a 200g pack the number of portions would be shown as 6 - 7 portions.
