Food companies cut calories – but is it enough?

Over the weekend a range of big food and drink manufacturers announced they are going to cut the calories in their products to help tackle obesity. This is part of the government’s new ‘responsibility deal’ to encourage the food industry to take their responsibility for nutrition and health seriously. The problem is that the Tory-led government only seems to be listening to the industry’s point of view – which is why a number of health charities and NGOs walked out of the talks.

Of course I welcome big companies such as Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsi, Mars and Subway trying to make their products healthier. But what I really want to see is those same manufacturers using transparent labelling so that people can make their own choices based on honest information.

Most of the companies that have signed up currently use GDAs, a system invented by the food industry. Guideline Daily Amounts, or GDAs, are meant to show you what percentage of your daily intake for calories, fat, saturates, sugar and salt a product contains. So you know that your bowl of cereal this morning provided you with 11% of the maximum amount of sugar you should eat today, for example.

Unfortunately it’s not so simple. GDAs are based on the recommended intake for the average middle-aged woman. For those people that are not middle-aged women, and for those middle-aged women who are not ‘average’, the numbers won’t be the same. Most importantly they will be very different for children. The most misleading aspect of GDAs, however, is that they are based on portion size. For example many GDAs for breakfast cereals are based on a serving of 30g, but most people would eat a serving of more like 50g. So if the box says you’re getting 20% of your calories from your cereal, in reality you’re getting more like 33%. And of course, not many people have the time or the inclination to add up their ‘percentages’ every day to make sure they are eating the recommended amounts.

This is why I have always favoured colour coding the nutrients in a traffic light scheme. Traffic lights are based on how much fat, saturates, sugar, salt or calories a product contains per 100g, which makes products easy to compare, regardless of portion size. So if you are comparing two ready-made beef lasagnes, and you want to cut down on salt, you can and immediately see that the one with a green or orange light has less salt than the one with a red light.

Some UK supermarkets have been leading the way on honest food labelling and I’m glad to see that Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Waitrose are part of the deal to cut calories, alongside using traffic light labelling. Unfortunately two of the biggest supermarkets, Tesco and Morrisons, still favour the GDA scheme, which according to all major consumer organisations is less consumer-friendly.

This week I am being filmed as part of a new BBC documentary on obesity. They want to know about the European food labelling legislation that I worked on for years, and was finally agreed last summer. I was pushing for traffic light labelling for all processed foods, action on added transfats and greater transparency about what exactly was in the food that we buy. Unfortunately many of my proposals were voted against after heavy lobbying from the food and drink industry.

The UK has Europe’s highest rate of obesity, and subsequently diabetes, heart disease and cancer, amongst other diseases, are on the rise. Around 25% of British people are obese, which is far higher than the EU average of 15%. If we are serious about reversing this tide, then we need to give people the information they need to make healthier choices for themselves. I call on Andrew Lansley to take his responsibility seriously by pushing the industry into using honest food labelling.

Time to end the myths about EU health and safety laws. Lives and livelihoods depend on it

EU laws often get a bad rep.

Sometimes, just as with national laws, the criticism is deserved. For example, you won’t see me defending the EU Treaty rule which forces MEPs to decamp toStrasbourg every month, at great cost to both the taxpayer and the environment.

But quite often, we MEPs find ourselves defending EU laws against widespread misinformation and unfounded claims. Just last week, a sketch in a local paper claimed that “the EU have banned the sale of batter bits” in local chippies. Complete nonsense. In fact, one upmarket restaurant has even added them to the menu. (As far as I know, the European Commission has not launched infringement proceedings against the chef.)

This becomes a serious problem when discussing the EU’s health and safety laws. It’s becoming harder and harder to find any good press about these, amongst all the ridiculous and untrue headlines about preventing kids from blowing up balloons or forcing trapeze artists to wear hard hats.

There is a real risk that all this misinformation could undermine public support for genuine health and safety rules. We all depend on health and safety guarantees so we can have a good work-life balance. In some industries, for example in construction or the emergency services, the laws even save people’s lives.

Of course, health and safety covers hard hats, protective equipment and the like. But many people might be surprised to find out just how many of their rights are secured under the ‘health and safety’ heading. The Working Time Directive, for example, is what ensures we have at least four weeks’ paid holiday each year, as well as rest breaks and the length of the working week. Before this Directive was passed in 1993, there was no legal guarantee of paid holidays forUK workers.

For working mums or soon-to-be mums, the Pregnant Workers Directive - another part of the EU’s health and safety framework – underpins your right to maternity leave, and ensures that your employer takes into account the health of your unborn or breastfeeding child whilst you are at work. Clearly, people’s working lives would be very different without these guarantees.

Yet it is a critical time for health and safety. In February, the Tory leader in the EU, then Martin Callanan, called for these two Directives to be scrapped entirely, allowing the UK Government to take away these rights. David Cameron has also said health and safety laws should be repatriated, in particular the Working Time Directive. Meanwhile, in December, Conservative and Lib Dem MEPs called for strict limits on new health and safety laws – and these MEPs are expected to be at the forefront of a new “informal committee” on health and safety in the European Parliament.

So this weekend, I was delighted to speak at a UCATT conference on health and safety to set the record straight. It is vital that employees and Trade Unionists understand how important these EU laws are to ordinary people’s working lives. We must all realise, too, that when the Government calls for “repatriation” of health and safety laws to theUK, they are really calling for important rights to be stripped away from workers.

Bogus headlines about “health and safety gone mad” can often cloud the issue – but in reality, as UCATT members in the construction industry know, people’s lives and livelihoods depend on their health and safety at work.

Repatriating powers means taking rights away from workers

Conservative calls to repatriate powers from Europe is really about taking rights away from working people.

That is the message which local MEP Glenis Willmott will deliver to an audience of trade unionists in Derby this Friday.
Glenis said: “David Cameron and other Tories are openly talking about the “repatriation of powers” over employment legislation.   This means that a Tory government could in the future cut maternity leave, increase working hours, and take away paid holidays.”

“Martin Callanan, the Tory MEP who leads the eight nation Conservative & Reform Group in the European Parliament, has actually said that scrapping workers’ rights is one “one of the best ways” to create jobs.   EU laws that protect workers’ rights, such as paid holidays and maternity and paternity leave, are really “barriers to actually employing people” according to him.

“So many of the rights which people enjoy at work stem from European legislation.   But if the Tories get their way, the laws could easily be changed, and protections we’ve taken for granted for years could disappear.

“This is a serious threat to the civil and human rights of millions of workers. We must be under no illusions: when the Tories speak about ‘repatriating’ powers, they mean taking rights away from working people.”

Labour support for BMI rescue bid

Labour’s East Midlands MEP is supporting the rescue bid proposed by IAG, the owner of British Airways, for BMI, and has written to the European Commission, who are presently considering the proposal.

Glenis Willmott said: “As the Labour MEP representing the East Midlands constituency, I am keen to see a solution to the problems at BMI which protects as many jobs as possible. BMI employs around 2,500 employees in the UK. This includes some 1,000 in the East Midlands, principally at the BMI headquarters at Donington Hall and at East Midlands Airport.

“I appreciate the Commission’s need to scrutinise the takeover bid from the competition perspective, in particular as regards BMI’s take-off and landing slots at Heathrow. Nevertheless, having cost its parent company Lufthansa a reported €285 million in 2011, leading Lufthansa to report a loss for the year, BMI seems to be increasingly unsustainable under its current ownership.

“I fear the alternative to IAG’s takeover bid would be an acceleration of the sustained contraction and loss of employment that we have seen at BMI over the last few years, or even potentially a complete collapse of the company.
 
“I have stressed to the Commission that, at a time of high unemployment in the UK and across the European Union, both the UK Government and the European Commission must do everything in their power to promote ways of creating and protecting sustainable employment.