ASDA's traffic light signposting on our own label products has been designed to help you easily understand the nutritional content of food. It follows the Food Standards Agency's guidelines and has been tested by our customers. We're proud to say that over 75% of you thought it was the easiest food labelling scheme to understand!
Because most of us need to reduce the amount of saturated fat, salt and sugar in our diets, the signpost system uses colour coding on the front of packs to show, at a glance, the calorie content, levels of fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar in prepared foods. In processed foods these are often hidden, which is why we need the signposting.
Where will I find the labels?
Not all foods require signposting. But for now, you'll find it on sandwiches, ready meals, burgers, sausages, coated meat and fish products, pies, pasties, quiches, pizzas and breakfast cereals.
What are GDAs?
Guideline Daily Amounts, or GDAs for short, tell you the maximum recommended calories, fat, saturated fat, salt and sugars that we should eat. Adult GDAs are:
- 2000 calories
- 90g sugar
- 70g fat
- 20g saturated fat
- 6g salt
The traffic lights give you the percentage of the GDA provided by a serving of a food. It's important to consider what role that food plays within your diet. For example, it's assumed you'll eat three meals a day, so a ready meal that provides up to 33%, or one-third, of your GDA for any nutrient is fine.
Don't forget to check the serving size - the traffic lights might give the values for a quarter of a pie, which is intended to be eaten with vegetables. If you eat half the pie, you need to double the values to find out if it still falls within one-third of the GDA.
What do the colours mean?
A food or meal with mostly green and amber signposts is fine to eat in moderation. Mostly reds means that the food should be eaten only occasionally.
To help you understand, have a look at the example above. It‘s taken from a 500g minced beef hotpot, which serves one person as a complete meal. Remember, one meal should make up around one-third of your daily intake, so the calories, total fat and salt are all within reasonable levels. The sugar, at 13% of your GDA, is colour coded green so you know that this is fine. Keep an eye on this though, because some savoury foods contain surprisingly high levels of sugar, which is why we've included this category
You can tell immediately that there's a lot of saturated fat in this meal - more than one-third of your daily intake. Overall, this meal would be fine to eat as part of a varied, balanced diet (mostly amber), but you should keep an eye on other meals and snacks during the day to make sure they aren't high in saturated fat, total fat and salt.
There are several systems of nutritional labelling used by supermarkets and manufacturers but our system was found to be the best for customers by the Food Standards Agency.
What else to look out for on our labels
You can also check the nutritional information panel on the back of packs. It's usually near the ingredients list. This gives similar information but it's not colour coded. The information might be given per 100g of the product, or per serving, or both. You can calculate the true values using the per 100g information. Have a look at the example below.
This is taken from a mini pizza. You can see that the total fat per 100g is 17.0g and the total fat per mini pizza is 8.0g. These panels also give you an indication of how many servings are in the pack.
Food Facts Panel
We've done a lot of work making our own label products healthier and cleaner. None of our products contain artificial colours, flavours or preservatives and we've also removed hydrogenated fats (this type of fat has been shown to increase levels of bad cholesterol in the blood) and aspartame.
The health claims that we make on packs conform to strict government legislation and are all supported by sound scientific evidence. The health claims might be about the presence of useful amounts of fibre or protein, or a particular vitamin or mineral, and there will be some information on the back of pack about why that particular nutrient is useful to us.
Health Icons
Our icons are found on the front of our products and they'll help you keep track of some of the most important parts of your diet.
5 A Day - this shows how many portions of fruit or vegetables each product contains. For this to be included there must be 80g (one portion) of fresh fruit or veg, or an equivalent amount of, say, fruit juice or pulses. We've included this to help you to eat the recommended intake of 5 portions of fruit and vegetables every day. Remember, try to eat as many different kinds of fruit and veg as possible.
2 A Week - one other important icon is the one showing that a product contains one of the recommended two weekly portions of fish. A portion is 140g and refers to white or oily fish. Ideally one of your two portions should be oily fish, such as mackerel, salmon or trout, which contain omega 3. This type of fat helps to keep your heart healthy.
