The Front Labeling Law says that it seeks to inform about the presence of excess components that may be harmful to health in the products that appear on the shelves of stores: we are talking about putting a package of potato chips or a serving of dairy products on the same level of classification.
It turns out that not only does it not fulfill the function it describes in its discourse, but it also becomes an attack against the food industry. It does not educate for nutrition, it indoctrinates for resentment: we are facing an arbitrary and harmful law.
The objectives of the front labeling law are, as they say, “to guarantee the right to health and adequate food, to provide understandable nutritional information on packaged foods and alcoholic beverages to protect the rights of consumers, to warn consumers about excess sugars, sodium, saturated fats, total fat and calories and to prevent malnutrition in the population and reduce chronic non-communicable diseases”.
It seems that all this becomes clear and intelligible by adding geometric figures. And that’s how a portion of cheese becomes almost a poison compared to a glass of soda. The madness is total.
So also those foods with more than one black octagon will not be allowed to be distributed in schools Let the children forget about a snack with dulce de leche!
Some who argue in favor of front labeling say that, no matter how much nutritional information table there is, almost no one knows what amount or percentage is an excess.
And the truth is that the table includes the maximum recommended values in a daily diet. It is complete. They need to teach people to interpret it…. and let’s say everything, it’s not Mandarin Chinese either.
The tables are designed to recommend intakes of selected macronutrients and micronutrients that maintain health, prevent deficiency diseases, and allow for adequate nutrient storage in normal situations.
Besides that there is no genuine government will to educate for proper nutrition, solve obesity, diabetes, healthy people is less business for the “health merchants”, than this show of pseudo-informative decadence of what makes us good or bad to eat.
On the other hand, that part of society that declares itself incapable of understanding nutritional tables eats what it can. Someone who hopefully eats twice a day cares little about the excess sugars in cookies, or the excess sodium in noodles.
Excess is a relative term. What may be excess for someone may not be excess for someone else. Octagons are meaningless. Instead of educating, they impede. Instead of informing, they scare.
How could the front labeling law, harm the dairy industry:
National Health Minister Carla Vizzoti, explained that another of the objectives is for companies to adapt their products as much as they can to make them healthier.
The dairy industry could never be against making it easier for consumers to know nutritional information, but it is clear that some reduction targets would not be technologically achievable.
Octagons multiplying in dairy products are detrimental not only to the domestic consumption of dairy products, but also to the much needed foreign currency income from exports, since the entry into force would generate a competitive disadvantage with respect to other countries, mainly Mercosur partners”, explained from the CIL.
Yogurts will have at least two warning labels, for excess sugars and/or excess saturated fats, putting them on an equal footing with other foods of lower nutritional quality.
Approximately 70% of the cheeses will bear seals for excess sodium and excess saturated fats, being these foods fundamental for the contribution of high contents of proteins of very high biological value, calcium “good” fats, since it is known that saturated fats of dairy origin do not cause damage to health as other saturated fats.
In the case of yogurts, even with reductions in added sugars, the seal would still be maintained, making any effort to reduce sugars meaningless. The added sugar content should be so low that it would affect palatability and consumer acceptance.
In most cheeses it is not technologically feasible to make reductions that would bring the content below 600 mg sodium/100 g cheese.
Although there are some types of cheese that can have 450-500 mg sodium/100g cheese, these are special technologies that are not within the reach of the entire industry and are types of cheese that do not have a high consumption in our country.
Salt is not an ingredient that is added to cheeses to give them flavor only, on the contrary, it exerts specific technological actions so that very low sodium values would affect cheese quality, conservation and consumer acceptance.
The purpose of the octagons is to go against the food industry. The war declared on food as part of the plan to turn us against ourselves.
It is about all of us caring about how we feed ourselves. The octagons teach us nothing. They are a tease, just another one. That’s the problem.
The paternalistic state that “takes care” by constantly overprotecting the “average” citizen by considering them ignorant and fragile is insulting to say the least.
