While eating healthy and preventing obesity lies under personal responsibilities. In 2008, New York city was the first to apply the nutrition labeling legislation. By labeling, the government decided to play a bigger role in the population health through helping and encouraging the consumer to make healthier choices. At the time, the legislation was limited to the restaurants. Generally speaking, the fast food outlets become obliged to visibly expose the calories on their menus especially for their usual available meals as part of the new consumer protection scheme. Nowadays, the food industry is seriously locked between a number of regulations developed to improve public health. Do this kind of regulation change the customer's habits? do they encourage healthier consumption? do they have any impacts on manufacturers and retailers revenues?
Since the 70s changes have been witnessed in the workforce such as longer working hours, more office jobs which require less physical efforts as well as the increased female participation. The result was less time for shopping or performing meals that require complex cooking skills. It favored more expenditure in outside eaten meals. However, most of the ready meals contain a higher percentage of saturated fats besides stabilizers and conservation elements, which when consumed in excess might have dangerous outcomes on health.
As a result, the last decades observed a growing challenge to the public health in several countries including the US, UK, and Australia and so forth due to the excess energy intakes which most of the time lead to weight gain. Obesity if not overweight become a serious problem attaining more than half of these named populations and many others with a higher risk to become chronically ill with diabetes, heart diseases and ...so on.
When the labeling legislation was adopted in New York to reinforce the government scheme to fight obesity, the manufacturers and retailers had to show the calories intakes. The number of calories mainly had to be in the same typeface and format as the food item in order to be visible to most of the clients. In certain cases, other information had to be clear as well. Nutrition partisans consider labeling a key tool to moderate fast food consumption and its impacts such as obesity and high pressure.
Following the legislation introduced in 2008, A study of how the labeling influenced the consumer behavior and the attention to buy lower calories items was undertaken by Brian Elbel and others researchers and have been published the next year. The study analyzed a sample of 1156 receipts gathered from people who bought food for themselves. The results showed no significant or visible influence of the calories labeling on the purchasing behavior. yet, almost half of the sample reported having seen the label. These results might lead to one and unique conclusion which is that the government strategy to influence the population and push it to make healthier choices is likely to make a very modest contribution to preventing the diseases related or that might be the result of obesity.
Over time the obesity rate kept rising and the government concern grew similarly especially that obesity and overweight records in children got even higher than ever before. Many other diseases and health issues such as cancer increased over the last decades and the number of sufferers rose in a dramatic way. Thus, the government's regulations, and policies, interventions and measures got even tighter.
For instance, the food and drinks manufacturers are now obliged to use new front-of-package labels easy to read and understand. Moreover, these changes have to be implemented by all the manufacturers no later than July26, 2018 while the small manufacturers with the recorded sales do not exceed $10 million per annum will have an additional year before implementing the policy even for the imported products. The new labeling policy comprises using bolded format to point out the important details such as calories, sodium, and other elements. Also, enormous restrictions have been implemented, for instance, on advertising high fat or high salt products to children and taxes have been formulated to prevent high intakes of sugary drinks... and so on.
Moreover, starting from the 1st of December 2016, In the US, all the restaurants are required to show the nutrient information visible to the clients as part of their government efforts to give to the consumer much more possibilities to make informed choices and maybe incentives to make healthier choices.
The government's efforts to provide the consumer with enough information to help them choose healthier food might be more fruitful coupled with legislative measures regarding the mandatory elements to add, to reduce or to eliminate, which change from a year to another following the general population's health information gathered. For instance, in the US, all manufacturers recently had been obliged to add certain essential elements like Vitamin D and Potassium.
The food and beverage industry in the US, for example, started to oppose to these legislations armed with arguments such as eating healthy is a personal choice and the government does not have to interfere in it. This does not mean, that the labeling and nutrition efforts to prevent unhealthy consumption do not play any beneficial role. It only shows that manufacturers and retailers are more concerned by the impact these interventions might have on their revenues and the purchase patterns. Thus, small or slow steps are not convenient as they most of the time decelerate policies development away from the regulatory interventions necessary to implement changes in the food and drinks markets, which are discouraging even if it is justs slightly or with a minimal effect the unhealthy consumption habits.
It is clear that the governments are making great efforts and it doesn't stop. Every year there is policies options and regulatory intervention to protect the consumer. But, does eating healthy is just a choice or it is most of the time an obligation? I thought about it myself many times and every time I came to the same conclusion, eating healthy costs a lot.
Follow @IElmhadderAs a result, the last decades observed a growing challenge to the public health in several countries including the US, UK, and Australia and so forth due to the excess energy intakes which most of the time lead to weight gain. Obesity if not overweight become a serious problem attaining more than half of these named populations and many others with a higher risk to become chronically ill with diabetes, heart diseases and ...so on.
When the labeling legislation was adopted in New York to reinforce the government scheme to fight obesity, the manufacturers and retailers had to show the calories intakes. The number of calories mainly had to be in the same typeface and format as the food item in order to be visible to most of the clients. In certain cases, other information had to be clear as well. Nutrition partisans consider labeling a key tool to moderate fast food consumption and its impacts such as obesity and high pressure.
Following the legislation introduced in 2008, A study of how the labeling influenced the consumer behavior and the attention to buy lower calories items was undertaken by Brian Elbel and others researchers and have been published the next year. The study analyzed a sample of 1156 receipts gathered from people who bought food for themselves. The results showed no significant or visible influence of the calories labeling on the purchasing behavior. yet, almost half of the sample reported having seen the label. These results might lead to one and unique conclusion which is that the government strategy to influence the population and push it to make healthier choices is likely to make a very modest contribution to preventing the diseases related or that might be the result of obesity.
Over time the obesity rate kept rising and the government concern grew similarly especially that obesity and overweight records in children got even higher than ever before. Many other diseases and health issues such as cancer increased over the last decades and the number of sufferers rose in a dramatic way. Thus, the government's regulations, and policies, interventions and measures got even tighter.
For instance, the food and drinks manufacturers are now obliged to use new front-of-package labels easy to read and understand. Moreover, these changes have to be implemented by all the manufacturers no later than July26, 2018 while the small manufacturers with the recorded sales do not exceed $10 million per annum will have an additional year before implementing the policy even for the imported products. The new labeling policy comprises using bolded format to point out the important details such as calories, sodium, and other elements. Also, enormous restrictions have been implemented, for instance, on advertising high fat or high salt products to children and taxes have been formulated to prevent high intakes of sugary drinks... and so on.
Moreover, starting from the 1st of December 2016, In the US, all the restaurants are required to show the nutrient information visible to the clients as part of their government efforts to give to the consumer much more possibilities to make informed choices and maybe incentives to make healthier choices.
The government's efforts to provide the consumer with enough information to help them choose healthier food might be more fruitful coupled with legislative measures regarding the mandatory elements to add, to reduce or to eliminate, which change from a year to another following the general population's health information gathered. For instance, in the US, all manufacturers recently had been obliged to add certain essential elements like Vitamin D and Potassium.
The food and beverage industry in the US, for example, started to oppose to these legislations armed with arguments such as eating healthy is a personal choice and the government does not have to interfere in it. This does not mean, that the labeling and nutrition efforts to prevent unhealthy consumption do not play any beneficial role. It only shows that manufacturers and retailers are more concerned by the impact these interventions might have on their revenues and the purchase patterns. Thus, small or slow steps are not convenient as they most of the time decelerate policies development away from the regulatory interventions necessary to implement changes in the food and drinks markets, which are discouraging even if it is justs slightly or with a minimal effect the unhealthy consumption habits.
It is clear that the governments are making great efforts and it doesn't stop. Every year there is policies options and regulatory intervention to protect the consumer. But, does eating healthy is just a choice or it is most of the time an obligation? I thought about it myself many times and every time I came to the same conclusion, eating healthy costs a lot.
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