A paradigm shift in packaged food
Setting standards for packaged food that promote healthier options and empower consumers
Challenge
Packaged food is often high in salt, sugar and even toxic additives, and it can be hard for consumers to find healthy options.
Solution
We work to create transparency around what’s really inside packaged food, and support governments to incentivize manufacturers to make products healthier.
Impact
With healthier products and clear nutrition labels, it’s easier to make healthy choices. One snack or meal at a time, diets improve and people live longer, healthier lives.
Why healthier packaged foods matter
Packaged foods high in salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats are now common worldwide—and over time their health effects add up to disabling heart attacks and strokes, and early death.
High salt intake alone causes nearly 2 million deaths each year, and salty packaged foods are partially responsible.
How healthier packaged food policies work
Shifting the food landscape so packaged foods must meet healthier standards and so unhealthy foods are easy to spot protects consumer rights and empowers families to make healthier choices.
Several policies working together can successfully make the healthier choice the easy choice:
Limits on harmful nutrients
Mandatory policies require food manufacturers to reformulate unhealthy products
Front-of-package warning labels
Prominent warning labels help consumers make healthier choices and reduce demand for unhealthy products, encouraging manufacturers to reformulate.
Marketing restrictions
Restricting—or prohibiting—marketing unhealthy foods to children helps parents promote healthy eating from the very start.
Fiscal policies
Taxes on unhealthy foods and subsidies for nutritious alternatives make healthier choices more accessible and affordable for everyone.
Using lower-sodium salts
Food manufacturers can replace traditional salt in packaged food items with low-sodium salt without altering taste.
Highlights
Global Nutrition Database
An online, open access, centralized platform for category level packaged food data.
Policy brief: Front-of-package warning labels
Front-of-package labeling plays a critical role in combating diet-related noncommunicable diseases and saving millions in healthcare costs.
Sodium Reduction Framework
Recommended components of a comprehensive dietary sodium reduction program, implementation tools and other resources.
Preventing cardiovascular disease through salt reduction
An overview of RTSL’s approach to sodium reduction, including reducing salt in packaged foods.
How RTSL supports healthier packaged foods
We support countries to develop a set of policies for packaged foods that works within their context. Here’s how:
Global tools and standards
Our experts have helped develop tools to guide countries as they take on packaged food reformulation. We supported WHO to develop global benchmarks for over 60 categories of packaged food, creating a common standard to inform countries as they set national-level targets for sodium reduction. We also supported PAHO’s Updated Regional Sodium Reduction Targets, which adapts the WHO benchmarks to the Latin American and Caribbean region.
With our partners at Global Health Advocacy Incubator, the Global Center for Legal Innovation on Food Environments, and Vital Strategies, we developed a set of best practices for nutrient profile models, which countries can use to establish thresholds for harmful nutrients and ingredients.
National action
Real change begins at the national level. We’re supporting our partners to adapt the WHO benchmarks into country-specific sodium targets and mandatory sodium limits. We’re also funding research to build an evidence base for front-of-package labelling policies in five countries.
Data for decision-makers
With our Global Nutrition Database for Packaged Foods, researchers, advocates and decision makers can compare sodium, sugar, and saturated fat levels in packaged foods by category and country, and see how they stack up against WHO sodium benchmarks and country targets. This centralized database—the only resource of its kind—creates transparency around high levels of sugar, salt and saturated fat in popular food products, and can inform policies targeting packaged food and track country progress.
