Guideline Daily Amounts

[baratron]

I finally managed to find the UK Guideline Daily Amounts for different nutrients (on a packet of Sainsbury's "Be Good To Yourself" oven chips, of all places!). The official table agrees very nicely with the one that johnckirk managed to put together from 3 different sources. Seeing that it's such a pain in the bum to get hold of, I thought I'd type it out in case anyone else was looking for it.

	Women	Men	Children 5-10 years
Energy (kcal)	2000	2500	1800
Protein (g)	45	55	24
Carbohydrate (g) of which simple (g)	230 90	300 120	220 85
Fat (g) of which saturated (g)	70 20	95 30	70 20
Fibre (g)	24	24	15
Salt (g) of which sodium (g)	6 2.4	6 2.4	4 1.4

Comments

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Er... but who on earth are the IGD? I mean, I went to the website, I saw the name "Food & Grocery Information, Insight & Best Practice" and the registered charity thing, but I've never heard of these people. Why should I trust them to know what they're talking about? More to the point, why is the information on the website of a charity I've never heard of and not on a page with a URL ending in .gov.uk or .nhs.uk? Especially when the Government has a perfectly good "healthy eating recommendations" website (http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/) which is very pretty but rather lacking in content.

Also, looking at some of the other information on the page, I have a horrible feeling that it might be these people who are responsible for the bloody awful pie charts of doom that Sainsbury's now print on their food packets, that have almost driven me entirely to shopping at Waitrose.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm bitching at you for linking to them, btw. More bitching at the Government for being... less than helpful :P

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Relevant quote from the best practice guidelines issued by IGD:

In order to help consumers put nutrition information into context, many companies have been using Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs) on pack since 1998, when IGD published guidelines for voluntary nutrition labelling including the use of GDAs for Calories, fat and saturated fats. These were developed following collaboration between government, consumer organisations and the food industry.

These GDAs were based on the recommendations of the Committee on Medical Aspects
of Food Policy (COMA) report on Dietary Reference Values. They translated the science into consumer friendly information, providing guidelines on the back of pack to help consumers put the nutrition information they read on a food label into the context of their overall diet. To date, these guidelines have been widely implemented in the UK and have been well received by industry and consumers.

The COMA report is Department of Health. Report on Health and Social Subjects No 41. Dietary Reference Values
for Food Energy and Nutrients for the United Kingdom. London: HMSO 1991., but I've not been able to find a source for this online.

So, DoH's remit is in publishing DRVs, whereas IGD's remit is the communication of these (as GDAs) to consumers. Quango-tastic.