The publication by the UK’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) of increased energy requirements and the ensuing media reaction has threatened to undermine public health education about obesity and overweight, Ben Cooper writes, and has posed questions for the Food Standards Agency about how it communicates complex scientific findings to the public.
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As if the debate over nutritional food labelling in the UK was not already tangled enough, a further complication was added to the mix earlier this month when the government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) published a draft report which raises Estimated Average Requirements (EARs) by up to 16%.
In spite of the fact that SACN, which has also launched a 14-week consultation on the findings, stressed that the “revised reference values should not be interpreted to mean that individuals or groups should increase their energy intake”, this is certainly how the news was interpreted in the media.
A headline in the Daily Express read ‘Diet guidelines are wrong’, while the article in the Times interpreted the calorie increase as equivalent to a ‘cheeseburger or a couple of packets of ready salted crisps’.
While SACN’s findings undoubtedly add to the understanding of how food consumption, physical activity, weight and health inter-relate, this intervention has been problematic for almost all parties in the food and health debate.
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By GlobalDataThe Food Standards Agency (FSA), which jointly with the Department of Healthy acts as the secretariat for SACN, had the unenviable task of making complicated scientific findings chime with an overall simple message on healthy eating.
If the draft findings result in changes to guideline daily amounts (GDA), industry faces the headache of having to change thousands of labels. Meanwhile, food campaigners were vexed that the message consumers were hearing would exacerbate the already severe problems related to obesity and overweight.
Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum (NOF) is in no doubt that the responsibility for the reaction to the announcement lies with the FSA and SACN rather than with the media. Fry says the media “could be forgiven” for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick because of the way the findings had been presented. SACN, he says, is not very “streetwise” regarding the consequences of how its findings might be interpreted.
As the body responsible for advising consumers on healthy eating, the FSA should, in Fry’s view, have taken a more strategic approach to reporting the SACN findings to ensure that they were not misinterpreted and did not risk confounding its overall message.
When reporting the findings on its own website, the FSA said its advice to consumers to eat less and exercise more remained unchanged, and also repeated SACN’s caveat that the findings should not be taken to mean people should increase their energy intake. However, the press coverage strongly suggests this was not enough.
The FSA maintains that it took adequate steps to avoid public confusion. When asked whether it should have done more, an FSA spokesperson told just-food it had made the situation “perfectly clear” and it was “unfortunate” that the press articles had suggested the report meant people could eat more. “There is nowhere in the report where it says that,” the spokesperson said. “It’s just the way the media have decided to present it.”
Whether that explanation passes muster remains to be seen. Away from the issue of how this was reported, the findings themselves have implications for nutritional labelling, which has been the subject of fierce debate in the UK in recent years.
The FSA spokesperson said the agency could not comment on any potential changes in policy until after the consultation period.
The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) and Tesco support a labelling system based on percentage of GDAs, while other retailers and campaigners favour the colour-coded ‘traffic lights’ system. The FSA has conducted extensive research into the issue, and announced earlier this year that it supported a hybrid system involving colour-coding, percentages and key words.
It should be noted that both the ‘traffic lights’ and percentage GDA schemes are based on the recommended daily intake but Fry suggests this debacle underlines just how confusing the whole GDA concept is for the public. For dietary advice to be effective the messaging has to be simple, and ‘traffic lights’ he believes offers that clarity for consumers.
Interestingly, the FDF made a similar conclusion about the need for clear advice. “The media coverage generated so far emphasises the need for simple, clear and consistent nutritional advice for consumers,” an FDF spokesperson told just-food.
The FDF said it shared NOFs concerns about the “potential confusion that the media coverage” could generate. “As an industry, we share society’s concerns about public health, particularly in relation to obesity, and are working hard to provide consumers with the information they need to make healthier food choices.”
The press coverage of the issue appears to have died down but Fry is concerned that if, as is likely, the draft EARs are confirmed in the final report when it is published next year, a similar media reaction will ensue.
As is all too evident from recent events, the FSA faces a tough challenge to avoid this. “It is not an easy message,” says the FSA spokesperson. And SACN makes the point that this is a “technical report”, balancing current UK energy intakes, physical activity levels, existing energy requirement values and new evidence on energy expenditure, adding that calculating energy requirements is “a complex issue”.
However, it could be argued that SACN’s responsibility lies primarily in providing the best science possible. Making sure that knowledge is passed on to the public in a clear and intelligible way rests with the FSA, and if that is not done effectively some of the benefit of conducting the research in the first place is lost.
The degree to which the FSA may be culpable in the media misinterpretation is a matter of debate. What seems less open to question is that it needs to learn from any mistakes to ensure that the work it does in promoting healthy eating, often praised by campaigners, is not compromised any further.
