Traffic light labels, a trick against the Mediterranean diet. And a waste of Italian-made food.

In the name of health, well-being and food sustainability, great and ambitious measures can be taken, or attempted. shady operations in favor of specific economic interests. Coincidentally, as usual, it's well-known multinationals. A paradigmatic case of this mechanism, which then leads to a chain reaction of damage and waste, is the attempt to introduce traffic light labels for food products across Europe, the "Nutriscore". That is, a score to indicate the contents of each product, and which would be the healthiest choice for the potential consumer: from A (the healthiest) to the E (the least healthy). In the middle, the various colors that indicate the presence of in foods fruit, vegetables, fiber, protein, sugars, salt, saturated and unsaturated fats.

Nutriscore

The diabolical cunning of this unfortunate system (Nestlé has announced its introduction in all its products) is that nothing exists, but absolutely nothing, scientifically valid to determine whether a product is healthy or not with colors and letters. To be clear: theolive oil, considered a natural protector of the heart and a true elixir of well-being, would risk, with the criteria of traffic light labels, finding itself with the E, or red label for less healthy productsMadness. There are thousands of doctors who do nothing but recommend the use of olive oil. The same goes for a long series of products of the Mediterranean diet, another certainty in the true scientific literature on people's well-being and the longevity it ensures.

Red dot

The only thing that is certain about traffic light labels is that a very heavy price that the entire Italian agri-food supply chain will payFrom farmers to producers. From small farmers to major Italian food brands, the most beloved and well-known in the world for its qualities, including as a healthy source of nutrition. In short: it's food. Made in Italy It risks being struck at the heart, and wasted en masse, by those who want to undermine and undermine it, instilling a kind of psychological terrorism in consumers. They use stickers, colored letters, and various gimmicks to push shoppers toward supposedly healthy products from multinationals that are loudly calling for green (?) and health-conscious nutrition labels.

How traffic light labels work

The proposal of traffic light labels was born in 2013 in Great Britain, to combat theobesity and cardiovascular diseases, and now it's very popular with large multinational food companies. In addition to Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Mars are also considering introducing them. Coincidentally, these are precisely the companies, with their huge revenues, that are most often called into question precisely because of the unhealthy characteristics of their products. These companies are pursuing their own legitimate interests, of course, but in this case, those interests are not aligned with ours as consumers and as Italians.

Let's look specifically at the reasons for waste. Traffic light nutritional labels do nothing but introduce theobligation to provide information on the contents of calories, fat, sugar, and salt in each product. From here we move on to the colors: a green label indicates a low content of one or more “at risk” ingredients, orange indicates an average value, and the Red Instead, it indicates a high percentage and therefore a danger to the consumer's health.

The damage to Italian products

So far the mechanism (in theory favourable to the consumer and to the protection of his health), which is applied on 100 gram packs of products: and where's the trick? First: this very abstract classification would directly affect a good part of the Made in Italy products, and 85 percent of our DOPs (which have a turnover of 11,5 billion euros, and which multinational food companies have their eyes on). In addition to olive oil, cheeses, cured meats and so on: It is genuine and authentic products, which may have high salt or fat content. But this does not mean they should be excluded from a healthy and balanced diet., and this does not mean that they should be labeled with the red color that considers them "harmful to health". With traffic light labels in all European countries, as requested by multinationals, we would reach the absurd point that a sugary drink, thanks to some manipulation in industrial processing, would have a green label, while a cheese from our small producers, made with ancient and healthy traditions, would have a red label, and therefore its sales would collapse. Second: the fight against obesity and cardiovascular diseases through nutrition, a very good thing, it is done with diet, with lifestyle, and not with such partial labels. Not by chance, thanks to our Mediterranean dietItaly is among the countries with a healthy population. This is thanks to its mix of natural foods, including cheese and olive oil, with their corresponding fat content. Third, traffic lights are applied to 100-gram packages, so, for example, in the case of Parmesan cheese, the levels would be very high and red would be a given. But who eats 100 grams of Parmesan? And who uses 100 grams of olive oil at their table?

TO KNOW MORE: At the table, you need very little to eat everything and live healthily. Don't miss the stories in this book.

Therefore, the way to fight obesity and bad nutrition, as to inform consumers well, it's not the one with traffic light labelsLabels, instead, should be clear and transparent, as we've long been requesting on our website, and should indicate the places of origin and processing of each product, along with the relative quantities of each ingredient. But this doesn't mean they should be color-coded, which, under the guise of protecting health, actually serves only to give a handout to the powerful global food industry lobby.

Power in the hands of an algorithm

Read also:

• Laser food labels: Sweden saves plastic and energy with a natural brand.
• Food labels: without the provenance, we risk eating only junk food.
• New food labels, origin finally becomes mandatory for milk and cheese