Dicken, Samuel J;
Batterham, Rachel L;
Brown, Adrian;
(2024)
Nutrients or processing? An analysis of food and drink items from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey based on nutrient content, the NOVA classification, and front of package traffic light labelling.
British Journal of Nutrition
, 131
(9)
pp. 1619-1632.
10.1017/S0007114524000096.
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Abstract
UK front of package labelling (FOPL) informs consumers on the nutrient content of food. However, FOPL does not consider food processing, and with the UK government being urged to act on ultra-processed food (UPF), whether UPF should be added to FOPL is unclear. This study compared food and drink in the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) Intake24 database based on FOPL, nutrient content and NOVA classification, to understand whether UPFs are covered by dietary recommendations for foods high in fat, salt, and sugar (HFSS). NDNS items were coded into minimally processed food (MPF), processed culinary ingredients (PCI), processed food (PF) and UPF according to the NOVA classification, and FOPL traffic lights. UPFs contained greater energy, fat, saturated fat (SF), total sugar (TS), and salt than MPF. UPFs had a greater odds of containing red FOPL and an unhealthier overall FOPL score (odds ratio (OR):4.59 [95%CI:3.79,5.57]; OR:7.0 [95%CI:6.1,8.2] respectively) and lower odds of containing green FOPL (OR:0.05 [95%CI:0.03,0.10]), compared with MPFs. For items with no red FOPL, UPFs still contained greater energy, fat, SF, TS and salt than MPFs. However, several UPFs have healthier FOPL scores. UPFs had an unhealthier nutritional profile and FOPL score than MPFs. For items with no red FOPL, UPFs still had an unhealthier profile than MPFs, with a higher energy density. Importantly, not all UPFs were unhealthy according to FOPL. These results indicate partial overlap between FOPLs, nutrient content and NOVA classification of UK food and drink products, with implications for UK food and drink labelling.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Nutrients or processing? An analysis of food and drink items from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey based on nutrient content, the NOVA classification, and front of package traffic light labelling |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0007114524000096 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0007114524000096 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Nutrition Society. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Front of package labelling, NOVA classification, ultra-processed food |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10186000 |
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