Under the EU Regulation on health claims No 1924/2006, the European Commission was required to set nutrient profiles specifying which products could bear health and nutrition claims back in 2009. However, Member States and stakeholders have failed to reach a consensus on this topic and earlier this year the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution urging the European Commission to ditch the concept of nutrient profiles altogether.
At the moment an independent consultancy hired by the European Commission to prepare an evaluation report on nutrient profiles is gathering data from the food industry to identify the costs and benefits of introducing nutrient profiles. The final report should be expected in 2017.
Meanwhile in 2015, the European branch of the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted its own nutrient profile model to define the criteria which shall prevent the marketing of unhealthy foods to children. Why was the WHO able to achieve this step, while the EU wasn’t?
Authored by: Maria Linkova-Nijs