Nutrition labels on pre-packaged food will not serve the purpose if they are not clear and legible.
The Consumer Council notices that there is great room for improvement for the nutrition labels on some pre-packaged food.
In a recent preliminary study, the Council examined the legibility of nutrition labels of several dozens of pre-packaged food collected from supermarkets and bakeries, including biscuits, yoghurts, canned/bottled foods, chocolates, breads, cakes, etc.
The following observations are gathered on the nutrition labels of the food samples studied by the Council:
- Font size too small: The height of Chinese characters is only 1mm in some products, while the English capital letters in some packages are less than 1mm in height.
- Space between words and characters is not sufficient.
- The print quality of words and characters is not good enough: The value of nurtient content is not clearly shown.
- Lack of contrast between the printed words and the background: e.g. white characters are found printed on a transparent plastic bag which contained white bread.
- Confusing background: e.g. the content of the label is not clearly shown when it was printed on a transparent plastic bag containing orderly aligned biscuits.
- The printed words are blurry and they overlap with other patterns/words on the packages.
According to the observations of the Council, overly small font size labels are commonly found in small food packages, while labels with poor print quality are usually found in imported products where local food labels had to be added on the packages. Labels on confusing background and lack of contrast are more common in products which use transparent plastic bags.
According to the current Food and Drugs (Composition and Labelling) Regulations, prepackaged food shall be legibly marked or labelled with a list of nutrients. The definition of "legible", however, is not stipulated.
The Centre for Food Safety issued a set of draft Trade Guidelines on Preparation of Legible Food Label for the industry last December. The guidelines aim at assisting the trade to provide legible information on food label to ensure that consumers are able to clearly read the nutrition information on the labels.
The Consumer Council considers that food manufacturers should be responsible for providing clear and easy-to-read food information to consumers, including information on nutrient contents.
With regard to the format of nutrition labels, the United States and European Union have set out clear regulations regarding font size, colour contrast, and line spacing on the labels.
To enhance the protection to consumers, the Council urges the Government to incorporate the definition of "legible labels" in the legislation. The definition should include the following:
- Suitable font size: the lowest limit of word/character height and width should be set out in definite values (e.g. in millimeters).
- Colour contrast: words/characters should be printed on background with a reasonable contrast. In the case of transparent package, it is recommended that a contrasting background colour be printed or added under the label to avoid illegibility of the label due to the colour of the food in the package.
- There should be enough spacing between words/characters, and between lines. Numbers such as 5, 6, 8 should be clearly distinguishable from each other.
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