experts call it an obesity epidemic and they're talking about normal people

like Barry

Barry is, well let's just say not very happy about his weight

He already has high blood pressure he starting to worry

because he's heard that obesity can cause other serious health problems

like diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer

Barry wants to eat less salt and lose weight

much easier said than done. It's not just a problem of self-discipline

To plan a healthy diet, Barry needs basic facts about the foods in a supermarket,

like how much sugar fat and salt they contain

The British came up with a very good idea. Take a well-known and

easy to understand symbol. They use it on food packages to mark the levels of key nutrients.

The amounts are always given per 100 grams

making it easy to compare products. The color-coding gets the message across

even to children

Red is for high levels, amber for medium levels

and green for low levels. For the first time, reliable nutritional facts can be presented

On the front of packages in a plain and simple way. However

some retailers and food manufacturers were worried this label may hurt their sales.

Why? Well, let's look at this box of cereal

Barry's favorite breakfast food. It happens to contain

more than 35 percent sugar and yet it's called

fitness fruits, giving it an eye-catching high-sugar label

would destroy advertising allusions.

So, Tesco Nestle in company came up with their own labeling system

to pull the plug on traffic light: The guideline daily amounts,

a mixture complicated numbers and percents

What happens when our friend Barry finds this GDA label on his fitness fruits?

He reads it contains

fourteen-point one grams of sugar per serving

and this is only 16 percent of the recommended daily amount for

mmm... an average middle age woman.

Then, Barry discovers that the numbers are actually based on a serving size a 40 grams.

That's certainly much less than he needs every morning.

Checking out other cereal boxes, Barry finds many different portion sizes.

So basically he needs a calculator to figure out whether

other cereals are healthier than his fitness fruit. That's why consumers and

health organizations are speaking out in favor of color-coded labeling.

With traffic light labels,

Barry can compare products at a glance and choose the healthiest.

Now the choice is up to the politicians. The proposed

EU legislation for not only make GDA-type labeling mandatory.

It would actually prohibit member states from requiring traffic light labels

on a national level. We believe this must not be allowed to happen.

For Barry and for all the other consumers out there,

traffic lights color your food for information.