ABSTRACT
Both health and sustainability are stated public policy objectives, but Canada’s food information rules and practices may not be optimal to support their achievement. Lacking a joined up national food policy [2], and thus clear purpose for public information about food, the information presented is frequently left to the marketers of product. No one has responsibility for determining the overall coherence of consumer food messages with these stated policy objectives. Individual firms provide information that shows their products to best advantage. As a result, consumers receive information that is incomplete, and
which may contradict the information provided by another firm or government agency. Individual consumers do not have the resources to determine with any ease the accuracy or completeness of any firm’s messages, particularly when faced with the size of food industry advertising budgets. Equally problematic, the national government has recently decided it will “no longer verify nutrition claims on food labels, and will instead set up a website where consumers can take their concerns directly to food producers” [3]. Partly in response to these information and monitoring gaps, for some time now third parties have been filling the consumer food information void, providing endorsements and health and eco-labels that can affect consumer purchasing behaviour.
