Junk Food Diet
You will now be able to rate your junk food using a simple scoring plan. Here’s why: The Food Standards Agency in the UK are about to give junk foods a rating out of 10 for calorie, salt, fat and sugar content. This is in attempt to control the amount of advertising of junk foods to children.
Junk food will also be scored for its merits out of 5 - for content like protein, fibre and fruit and vegetables. When you subtract the health score from the junk score, you get the overall rating for the food. Here’s what the FSA had to say about it (reported by the BBC)
“The model uses a simple scoring system that rates the overall balance of nutrients in the food.
“This means the model identifies foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar but recognises the importance of fruit and vegetables, cereal, meat and dairy-based products in the diet.”
However, reports have suggested some popular cereals would be classed as unhealthy, while burgers would get a score of under four.
Dr Joanne Lunn, a nutrition scientists at the British Nutrition Foundation, said it was not easy to draw up such a system, but praised the FSA model for taking into account positive nutrition content.
“It is important to bear in mind that common perceptions about what is and isn’t healthy aren’t always reflected by the facts.
“It is well recognised that some cereals, even high fibre cereals, are high in sodium which will influence their final score.”
Martin Paterson, deputy director general of the Food and Drink Federation, said: “Simplistic approaches which label foods good or bad without taking account of actual consumption behaviour will be irrelevant to real consumers’ lives.”
Sounds hokey, but any attempt to make it easier for people to identify junk is good for me.