Pretoria - Remember my consumer hero, Simon Mathale of Mamelodi, who visits shops in his area to check date stamps on food products?
A self-employed business consultant, he gains nothing material from his activities, travelling to the shops by taxi in his spare time, removing “expired” products and advising shop owners on better stock rotation. A few have taken offence, and a particularly nasty encounter saw Mathale spending a night in a police cell. But many respect what he’s doing and have cleaned up their act.
Among the many heartwarming responses to that column was an invitation from top dietitian Jane Badham, who for many years has advised the food industry on regulatory compliance and food law.
She offered to spend a day training Mathale on food labelling regulations and guidelines, free of charge, at her Joburg office. And when she extended the invitation to me, too, I jumped at the opportunity. It was an eye-opening few hours. I discovered that my knowledge of the regulations – which have to be read with the guidelines, as well as a series of amendments which have been issued by the health department – was somewhat patchy.
Admittedly, it’s a bewildering issue, with various departments and pieces of legislation at play, sometimes in contradiction.
For example, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Daff) regards a cheese containing 28 percent fat as low fat, while Department of Health labelling regulations say a product can be labelled low fat only if it contains less than three percent fat.
And it’s Daff which is in charge of juice descriptions. The words you see on “juice” labels are not random – to be called a juice it must be 90 percent fruit juice, as opposed to a “nectar”, which is only half fruit juice, and a fruit “drink” which is just six percent fruit juice. And if it’s a “flavoured” fruit drink, it contains less than six percent fruit juice.
A big revelation was the fact that while food makers are required to list the ingredients in their products, in ascending order, the regulations do not require them to declare nutritional information about the product.
That’s the breakdown of the amount of protein, fat, carbohydrates (including sugar), sodium, dietary fibre and total kilojoules.
“If the legislators had really cared about consumer’s health, that should have been mandatory,” Badham said.
“If the manufacturers choose to include nutritional info, it must be in a prescribed format, but I’m amazed how many are getting this very wrong. And there’s no excuse – there are very clear guidelines on how it should be done.”
Manufacturers are also required to include storage instructions – for before and after opening the product – on the label, in bold capital letters not less than 3mm high, “but quite a few manufacturers are still failing to do this”, Badham said.
This is essential information for consumers, to prevent food from spoiling.
In fairness, many food products do have these instructions on the label – a tinned tub in my cupboard advises: “Once opened, transfer to non-metallic container and refrigerate for up to two days”, and my brand of peanut butter states: “Unopened: Keep cool & dry. Opened: Keep cool & dry. Do not refrigerate.”
But I also found several tinned fish products with no such advice, which is troubling. - Pretoria News