Traffic Light Nutritional Labelling making healthier food choices easier - Green to Go, Amber to Caution and Red to Stop!

If you are the one who cares what food choices you make for yourself and your family then Traffic Light Labelling can be a helpful tool for you.

The traffic light labelling provides 'at a glance' nutritional information of foods through the use of traffic light colours.

What would the lights indicate?

It tells you the levels of each of four core ingredients Sugars, Fat, Saturated Fat and Salt. In addition it could also give information on Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs) and calories.

It could also tell you about beneficial nutrients in food like fibre in accordance to the legislative requirements

What foods do they appear on?

Waitrose, Sainsbury, Asda, Boots, Co-op, McCain, Marks and Spencer have adopted on voluntary basis the traffic light scheme.

Traffic light colours are likely to be used on the following foods: ready meals, pizzas, sandwiches, breakfast cereals, sausages, burgers, pies and coated food products such as chicken nuggets and fish fingers. This is because the nutritional content of these foods that are most difficult to understand and most likely to have big variations in the amount of fat, sugar and salt between the different brands.

Traffic Light Scheme versus Guideline Daily Allowance (GDAs)

Some of the biggest players like Tesco, Morrisons, Cadbury,Nestle, Kellogg’s and Kraft  promote the more complex numerical schemes showing percentage Guideline Daily Amounts or % GDAs as the main form of labelling on their products. GDAs stands for Guideline Daily Allowance and are a guide to how much energy and key nutrients the average healthy person needs in order to have a balanced diet. 

So what do you find clear and easy to interpret?

 (Courtesy: http://www.netmums.com/family-food/healthy-eating/making-sense-of-food-labels/traffic-light-labels)

Find your Traffic Light Labels on your food items next time you go for your shopping!

The Traffic Light Scheme is a more simplier and easier form of food labelling, and also believe it is much more helpful compared to GDA labelling.

 We expect retailers and manufacturers to take up the recommendations of the Food Standards Agency to make Traffic Light scheme available on their food packs as soon as possible, to provide greater clarity for consumers.


If you wish to know more about the traffic light scheme of labeling then you could visit Food Standard Agency’s website at http://tna.europarchive.org/20100910172942/http://www.food.gov.uk/foodlabelling/