Kellogg's relabels cereals to show fat and sugar levels

The new labelling shows daily intake percentages of 12 food values.

Consumers of many brands of breakfast cereals will soon be able to read on the packet how much of their daily allowance of fat and sugar they are eating.

Kellogg's is starting to put daily-intake percentages of 12 food values on the front of its cereal packets.

This shows, for example, that average adults will obtain 7.3 per cent of their daily energy needs from a 45g serving of Sultana Bran.

The company's marketing communications manager, Vicki Hamilton, said yesterday the voluntary move was to help reduce obesity. It was not a bid to forestall tougher regulations for nutritional panels on food packaging.

The health select committee has been urged by some health lobbyists to recommend tougher regulations on the compulsory panels, a position previously promoted by chairwoman and Green MP Sue Kedgley.

Ms Hamilton said the labelling would be on all the company's cereals by August and its snacks by December.

The aim was to provide information to allow people to be better informed in their choices.

She said research had shown that 94 per cent of Australians did not understand how much energy they needed each day to keep their weight at the right level. New Zealanders were probably the same.

"As a response to that, this information on the pack gives people an understanding of what our product will provide in terms of the energy intake for the day."

Kellogg's says at least half of mothers do not completely understand the current nutrition panels and that they need to be simplified.

But some nutrition and diabetes specialists interviewed yesterday questioned the value of the new information panels - although the Nutrition Foundation said the panels would help people eat the right quantities.

Massey University nutritionist Professor John Birkbeck said they were used in the United States and were only meaningful for an average adult with average energy needs and output.

"If you're an elderly lady or a 5-year-old child it has little meaning for you."

Ms Hamilton said her company's website had a calculator that could be used to work out daily intakes for people other than average adults.

A Fight the Obesity Epidemic spokeswoman, diabetes specialist Dr Robin Toomath, said she agreed with the Kellogg's initiative but suspected its effect on consumption would be minimal.

"What we're wanting to do is reduce food consumption all over. The community is getting fatter so they all need to consume less calories."

Mothers were more likely to give in to preschoolers whining for Coco Pops at the supermarket and breakfast table than to act on the written daily intake panels and properly control the intake of such foods.

A better approach would be taxes on products laden with sugar or fat that would price them off shelves - or the traffic light system the group had urged on the select committee - foods that should be eaten only occasionally got a red sticker; often, a green sticker; and in-between, an amber one.