13th August 2007
Press release
Food industry's GDA labelling campaign moves into phase two
The food industry's campaign to educate shoppers on the uses and benefits of Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) labels continues to gather pace as it embarks on the next phase of its £4million 'What's Inside Guide' campaign. To date the campaign and the introduction of the labels on to over 20,000 products has successfully driven awareness of the labels amongst shoppers to 80%, ensuring that they are familiar to millions. In this next phase the focus of the activity will be on driving even greater understanding and usage via a wide reaching education programme speaking to up to 13 million consumers in partnership with a number of top consumer magazine titles[1].
A series of features across Take a Break and Bella magazine over an eight-week period focus on different components of the GDA label each week. The features are based around a fictional family, the Taylors, and include handy meal planners and recipe pull-outs, aimed at helping shoppers see how GDA labels can be used in day-to-day life. Additional ad hoc features are also running in titles including Hello!, OK!, Chat and the Sunday Mirror's colour supplement Celebs on Sunday.
The campaign is further supported by the rollout of 15,000 'What's Inside Guide' leaflets across 3,000 doctor’s surgeries around the UK. The availability of the leaflets offers those consumers concerned or interested about what's inside the food they feed to themselves and their families, the opportunity to read up on GDA labels and learn how to make the most of them.
GDA labels are designed to help people of all backgrounds to understand the percentage guideline daily amounts of calories, sugars, fat, saturates and salt that are in a portion of food or drink in order to guide them towards better-informed food choices for a healthy balanced diet.
The easily recognisable GDA labels are now used by 50 companies and feature on the front of approximately 20,000 product lines[2], making it the most consistent, well known and widely available front-of-pack labelling scheme in the UK.
Food industry GDA campaign director, Jane Holdsworth said: "We are making every effort to ensure we are reaching as many people as possible with information and advice on using GDA labels. In fact, independent research already indicates that 80 per cent of shoppers have now seen GDA nutrition labels on food and drink products and 54 per cent have already used them[3]. With such a widespread and consistent front-of-pack labelling scheme, this latest activity aims to help shoppers up and down the country use GDA labels to make easy comparisons between everyday foods and help them choose foods that best suit their diet."
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To find out more call the GDA press office on: +44 (0) 20 7820 9764
References:
1 ABC circulation figures for Take a Break, Bella, Chat, Celebs on Sunday, OK! and Hello!
2 The companies that now use GDA labelling are: A G Barr, ABF, Aldi, Bird’s Eye, Brakes Food Service, Britvic, Cadbury Schweppes, Calypso, Carrs Foods International, Coca-Cola, Danone, Discovery Foods, Evron Foods, Findus, Gerber, Golden Wonder, GSK, Hormel Foods, Kellogg, Kraft, Lidl, Masterfoods, Morrisons, Nestle, Netto, Nichols plc (Vimto), Nisa-Today, Northern Foods, Novotel Hotels, O P Chocolate, Pataks, PepsiCo, Premier, Pro Pack Foods, Raynor Foods, Shloer, So-Good, Somerfield, Spar, Sugar Puffs, The Speldhurst Sausage Ltd, Tate & Lyle, Tesco, The Real Potato Co, Trimlyne, Tunnocks, Unilever, Villa Soft Drinks, Westler Foods, Warburtons.
3 Source: Millward Brown Computer Aided Self-completion Interview process (CASI) of 500 nationally representative adults aged 18+ during 5 March – 1 April 2007.
