Nutrition labels and health claims: the global regulatory environment

Assessing food labelling legislation on an international scale

By: Hawkes C
Published by: World Health Organization (WHO) , 2006
Via: Eldis

This review of the global regulatory environment around nutrition labelling and health aims to provide an overview of existing international, regional and national regulations and a description of past and future regulatory developments. It compiles and categorises international, regional and national regulations, and compares differing regulatory systems in 74 countries and areas. It also reviews regulations on the quantitative declaration of ingredients (information which indicates to consumers the proportion of healthful and less healthful components of the food product). A secondary objective is to provide an overview of the different approaches to developing and implementing these regulations and highlight some of the associated public health issues.