English 4, post 3: Labeling Law

Hello everyone! Today, to talk to you about a topic of my career, I was inspired by a conversation I just had with my partner, and it's about the labeling law and the warning seals that some of the foods we buy come with. What do they mean? Have they helped at all?

The "Labeling Law" is implemented in Chile in June 2016 and mandates the use of "ALTO EN" warning seals (similar to a stop disc) on foods with high sugar, sodium, saturated fat or energy content, which allows to identify these products more easily. Likewise, products with seals cannot be sold in schools, cannot be advertised in mass media at times of peak child presence, cannot contain toys or figures that appeal to minors, and a series of other restrictions to prohibit their promotion to children under 14 years of age (Corvalán, Reyes, Garmendia et al, 2019). The aim is to transform food environments to make them healthier and influence people's behavior, discouraging the purchase and consumption of unhealthy foods. All this because almost a third of the energy consumed by Chileans comes from ultra-processed foods. In fact, Chile is one of the countries with the highest levels of excess weight worldwide. 

When does a food have to bear seals? It is appropriate to label the seals on all packaged foods that have added sugars, fats or sodium, and whose nutritional contribution exceeds any of the nutrient limits. nutrient limits established in the RSA (Minsal, 2017). The permitted limits differ depending on whether the food is a solid food or a liquid food. Below you can see a table where the limits for each of the nutrients are specified: 

Did they do any good? After the implementation of the Labeling Law in Chile, the food industry positively changed its discourse on regulation, improved the quality of the food supply, mainly by reducing the sugar and sodium content, and used the presence of a portfolio of healthier products as a promotional strategy for its products. In addition, there was no impact in terms of jobs, wages and physical output of the food production sector (FAO, 2021). In general, consumers shifted their purchasing behavior toward products with fewer seals. And the food industry reformulated its products to receive fewer labels, decreasing the sugar and calorie content of the product offering. 

References

Corvalán, C., Reyes, M., Garmendia, M. L., y Uauy, R. 2019. Structural responses to the obesity and non-communicable diseases epidemic: Update on the Chilean law of food labelling and advertising. Obesity Reviews, 20(3), 367-374. (disponible en doi:10.1111/obr.12802). 

 

Ministerio de Salud, Gobierno de Chile. (2017). MANUAL DE ETIQUETADO NUTRICIONAL DE ALIMENTOS. minsal.cl. Recuperado 3 de enero de 2022, de https://www.minsal.cl/ley-de-alimentos-nuevo-etiquetado-de-alimentos/

 

Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura (FAO) & Instituto de Nutrición y Tecnología de los Alimentos de la Universidad de Chile (INTA). (2021). IMPACTO DE LA LEY CHILENA DE ETIQUETADO EN EL SECTOR PRODUCTIVO ALIMENTARIO. fao.org. Recuperado 3 de enero de 2022, de https://www.fao.org/3/cb3298es/cb3298es.pdf