Food Standards revises rules for ‘traffic light’ packaging

Research found that consumers wanted to be able to distinguish between products based on the source of the sugars. A food can be labelled amber for sugars if the total amount exceeds 5g per 100g and added sugars are less than 12.5g per 100g.

The guidance also provides advice on Pantone colours and CMYK breakdown for the traffic lights, as well as the text colour, font and font size. Monochrome packaging may use the signposts with the words 'high', 'medium' and 'low' in place of colours.

The changes take immediate effect for newly labelled products, and when labels are next reprinted for existing signposted products.

An agency spokeswoman said it currently had no plans to expand the scheme to cover further food groups, although this would be reviewed in 2008.

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