Checking labels can help your kids live longer

Checking the labels of the food in your supermarket trolley can help your children live healthier and longer. That's the stark message delivered today by the Trading Standards Institute to British parents.

The TSI is concerned that food labelling is still too difficult for parents to understand, making it harder for them to make the right choice for their children. They're calling for food companies to standardise labels as well as making them clearer – for example, stating the salt rather than the sodium content.

In an example, given by the TSI, a child who eats the highest fat content breakfast cereal, snack, ready-made lunchbox, cereal and chocolate bar, a ready-meal, dessert and drink would eat 133.7g of fat in a single day. The recommended daily intake is just 85g a day for boys and 70g a day for girls.

Trading standards officers in 37 local authorities in England and Wales, took part in the survey, purchasing a total of 279 samples, including breakfast cereals, lunch box foods, snacks, crisps, desserts, sweets, chocolate, ready meals, biscuits, bars, pizzas and tinned products like beans and spaghetti hoops. Wide variations were found - for example, sweets ranging from a high of 33g fat to a low of 0.1g and ready-made meals varying from 6.9g salt to just a trace.

TSI chief executive Ron Gainsford said: 'The diet of many children is a cause for concern. We carried out our latest survey to highlight to parents that they can make choices which will give their children the chance of longer, more healthy lives."

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