Deakin Speaking

When you walk into Hungry Jacks, or McDonalds, or Kentucky Fried Chicken, and order your Whopper Value Meal, Big Mac Value Meal, or Ultimate Burger Meal, what does 1430kj, 2590kj and 3800kj (approx.) mean to you? Probably not very much.

But, instead of esoteric energy counts, what if you were confronted with something more comprehensible, like 75 minutes of sprinting (Medium Whopper Value Meal), or a 2 hour game of squash (Large Big Mac Value Meal), or, perhaps 5 hours of fast swimming (Ultimate Burger Meal)? Would you think again about buying all that food?

I think you would.

Australian and New Zealand ministers responsible for food regulation last week bowed to lobbying from processed food manufacturers and agreed to permit them to market products with general level health claims without requiring pre-market or independent verification.

General level health claims are those that relate a food or an ingredient with a health benefit, such as “product X helps promote the strength of the immune system”.

The ministers’ decision came just over a week after the Australia Institute for Health and Welfare released its Australia’s food and nutrition 2012 report, showing approximately one in four Australian children and nearly two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese. Diet-related diseases including obesity cost the health system over A$16bn annually.