Smart Rich Information

The consumers should be informed better of the nutritional value of the products that they buy to the grocery store and in the chains of fast restoration.

It is what the Foundation Lucie and André Chagnon1 sustained, at the time of the audiences of the Commission on the future of agriculture and the agroalimentary Québecois, held in Montreal. The Foundation asks the governments federal and provincial to oblige the chains of fast restoration and the agroalimentary industry to ” to provide a clear and easy nutritional information to understand.”

The restaurants of fast food should be held to display the caloric content of the meals on their menus, claim the Foundation. And food transformed traitors in the grocery store should raise a simple color code that would allow the consumers to distinguish the good easily produced of those that are bad for health.

To give the weight to his/her/its recommendations, the Foundation offers to invest 50 millions of dollars on ten years if ” some legislative measures are taken to promote the kindness of a healthy food”, specified, before the Commission, the president of the Foundation, André Chagnon.

For illuminated choices

” Information contained in the pictures of nourishing value on the food products is only comprehensible for the insiders and it excludes the restoration” completely, increased the Dr Michel Boivin, chief of the health promotion to the Foundation. ” To the grocery store, the multiplication of information and logos on the prepacked products returns the overloaded label, or even incomprehensible”, he/it has added.

According to the Foundation, an obligatory code on the value nourishing of food, ” adopted without delay” would allow the consumers to make illuminated choices. The task to value the nutritional quality of the products would come back to a governmental organism that would decide the code to affix on each.

On their side, the chains of fast restoration would have to ” to indicate the caloric content of the standard meals” on their menu so that it is possible to compare the number of calories between an only hamburger and one meal burger including French fries and soda, underline the Foundation.

A code of inspired color of the circulation fires

Mentioning experiences led in England and to the United States, the Dr Michel Boivin suggests that the government is inspired by the circulation fires in the development of a system of codification of the products:

Green for the good products for health.
Yellow for those to consume with moderation.
Red for the products to avoid.

According to André Chagnon, only some coercive measures will have an effect at the producers, the transformers and the retailers. ” The market will adapt to the requirements of the law, as it was the case in struggle against the tobacco addiction. ”

André Chagnon estimates that the state cannot make fi of his/her/its call. ” Health represents 22 billions of dollars of the budget of Quebec per year, with an increase of 7% annually. The government must think and must act long-term to reduce the pressure on his/her/its global budget.

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