Oliver picks ingredients for fresh labelling row with Sainsbury's

Published on Saturday 2 February 2008 19:04

JAMIE Oliver has risked another row with Sainsbury's by opting for rival supermarket giant Tesco's nutrition labelling system for his new food range.

The celebrity chef was forced to apologise last month after he was reported as criticising Sainsbury's – with whom he has a 1.2m-a-year advertising deal – for not participating in a TV debate on battery-farmed chickens.

Now it has emerged Oliver's new range of sauces, oils and salads will shun Sainsbury's "traffic light" labelling which uses red, amber and green to indicate high, medium and low levels of fat, salt and sugar.

Instead, Oliver's products will feature the single-colour labels favoured by Tesco, which show fat, salt and sugar as a percentage of the recommended guideline daily amount (GDA).

Oliver's spokesman said the decision had been made in the interests of the consumer and was not a slight on Sainsbury's.

Jane Hilton, head of marketing for Fresh Retail Ventures, which markets the Jamie Oliver food range, told The Grocer magazine: "Both labelling schemes were looked at, but we decided that GDAs gave clearer information than traffic lights to allow consumers to make a decision."

The Food Standards Agency favours traffic lights, but last week the European Commission set out proposals to make GDA labelling compulsory across the EU.

Sainsbury's said in a statement: "GDAs provide customers with useful information, which is why we have had them on the back of pack for years.

"However, when it comes to front-of-pack labelling, our view is that multi-traffic light systems have been frequently proven to be the best and most informative way for people to make at-a-glance decisions on the foodstuffs they buy."