Abstract
PurposeOur objectives were to assess the performance of the 5-Colour nutrition label (5-CNL) front-of-pack nutrition label based on the Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system to discriminate nutritional quality of foods currently on the market in France and its consistency with French nutritional recommendations.MethodsNutritional composition of 7777 foods available on the French market collected from the web-based collaborative project Open Food Facts were retrieved. Distribution of products across the 5-CNL categories according to food groups, as arranged in supermarket shelves was assessed. Distribution of similar products from different brands in the 5-CNL categories was also assessed. Discriminating performance was considered as the number of color categories present in each food group. In the case of discrepancies between the category allocation and French nutritional recommendations, adaptations of the original score were proposed.ResultsOverall, the distribution of foodstuffs in the 5-CNL categories was consistent with French recommendations: 95.4 % of ‘Fruits and vegetables’, 72.5 % of ‘Cereals and potatoes’ were classified as ‘Green’ or ‘Yellow’ whereas 86.0 % of ‘Sugary snacks’ were classified as ‘Pink’ or ‘Red’. Adaptations to the original FSA score computation model were necessary for beverages, added fats and cheese in order to be consistent with French official nutritional recommendations.ConclusionThe 5-CNL label displays a high performance in discriminating nutritional quality of foods across food groups, within a food group and for similar products from different brands. Adaptations from the original model were necessary to maintain consistency with French recommendations and high performance of the system.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12937-015-0090-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Primary prevention of the growing burden of chronic diseases in Western countries requires multifaceted and multilevel interventions, in which nutrition may play a strategic role being a key modifiable risk factor [1,2,3,4].Prevention programs have been developed at the state level in most Western countries and have included nutrition in their framework [5]
Julia et al Nutrition Journal (2015) 14:100 campaigns and broadly disseminated through national food based dietary guidelines and food guides [7, 8]. Beside these population-wide disseminated recommendations, recent propositions in public health nutrition in France have put forward the use of a front-of-pack nutrition label on foodstuffs, as a complementary public health tool. This label would summarize the nutritional quality of the food or beverage [9], based on the Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system (FSA Nutrient profiling system (NPS) score, named FSA score throughout the manuscript) [10,11,12]
Application of the original FSA score The distribution of the various food groups within the 5-Colour nutrition label (5-CNL) categories (Tables 1 and 2) was on the whole consistent with French recommendations: 95.4 % of ‘Fruits and vegetables’, 72.5 % of ‘Cereals and potatoes’ were classified as ‘Green’ or ‘Yellow’ whereas 86.0 % of ‘Sugary snacks’ were classified as ‘Pink’ or ‘Red’
Summary
Primary prevention of the growing burden of chronic diseases in Western countries requires multifaceted and multilevel interventions, in which nutrition may play a strategic role being a key modifiable risk factor [1,2,3,4].Prevention programs have been developed at the state level in most Western countries and have included nutrition in their framework [5]. Julia et al Nutrition Journal (2015) 14:100 campaigns and broadly disseminated through national food based dietary guidelines and food guides [7, 8] Beside these population-wide disseminated recommendations, recent propositions in public health nutrition in France have put forward the use of a front-of-pack nutrition label on foodstuffs, as a complementary public health tool. This label would summarize the nutritional quality of the food or beverage [9], based on the Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system (FSA NPS score, named FSA score throughout the manuscript) [10,11,12]. The objective of this label would be to help consumers making healthier food choices at the point of purchase
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