Règlementation relative à l’étiquetage et aux allégations des produits alimentaires en général, et des huiles et matières grasses en particulier

Abstract

Scientific research has evolved to identify relationship between nutrients and health effects. Theses scientific evidences can help to establish public health recommendations, which will be used by operators to formulate or optimize their food products. Labelling serves as a support for consumer information, raising its awareness about the food product nutritional composition. This enables the consumer to make an informed choice. Labelling also participates in the promotion of some of the food components, e.g. essential fatty acids in vegetable oils. In this context, regulation has evolved and allows operators to highlight nutritional benefits of their products via labelling information. Two different types of information must be distinguished: nutrition labelling and nutrition or health claims. The new European Regulation 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, published at the end of 2011, establishes a mandatory nutrition labelling with a fixed list of nutrients. Hence, food manufacturers are required to label the energy, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt content of all their products. The Regulation on nutrition and health claims made on foods, published at the end of 2006, applies stringent rules to the use of claims and introduces the concept of a positive list for nutrition and generic health claims. This regulation aims at supporting public health recommendations and at providing the consumer with a high level of protection. A number of claims can be applied to vegetable oils. Nutrition labelling is an essential tool to disseminate and popularize scientific information in order to outreach consumers, as in the case of fatty acids, plant sterols or fat-soluble vitamins labeled in vegetable oils.