Food Company Tells Consumers Which Products Not to Eat All the Time

You aren’t going to get healthy eating a daily diet comprising Uncle Ben’s rice, Seed of Change Seven Whole Grains mix, and Dolmio carbonara sauce—and Mars Food, which makes these and many other products, is going to start telling consumers as much. On Thursday, the company announced that it would introduce new labeling language that flags foods that should only be eaten on an “occasional” basis and those that are for “everyday” consumption. The products mentioned above fall into the “occasional” category, which Mars defines as not more than once a week.

“We’re holding ourselves to a much higher standard,” Fiona Dawson, a global president at Mars, told the BBC. The company will not only introduce the new labeling but has adopted new nutrition standards based on the recommendations of the World Health Organization and other public-health groups that are more stringent than, say, the Food and Drug Administration’s. As a result, the company will cut sodium in its products by an average of 20 percent by 2021 and will reduce the amount of sugar in its products, although it did not provide a specific target or time line. Additionally, half of Mars’ rice products will be reformulated to contain either whole grains or legumes, and jarred tomato sauces will have at least one serving of vegetables.

Mars Food (which does not include the candy arm of the company) aims to have 95 percent of its products be nutritious enough, per its new standards, to bear the “everyday” label. Even the eventual 5 percent that will be marked “occasional” will, according to Dawson, “still go through some amount of reformulation to be made healthier.”

The updated nutrition standards and labeling regime follows Mars’ announcement last month that it will voluntarily label chocolate and candy products that contain GMOs across the U.S. ahead of Vermont’s labeling law going into effect. As sales of packaged and processed foods lag across the industry, companies like Mars are trying to lure back consumers who have turned toward fresher, healthier options.

Mars is going out on its own with this latest nutrition standards effort, but it’s also lending its support to long-delayed regulations from the FDA on cutting sodium content in food items. Despite the draft guidance from the agency calling for voluntary cuts, the rest of the industry has resisted the new regulations.

“We support the release of the U.S. FDA’s draft sodium reduction guidance because we believe it’s important to begin a stakeholder dialogue about the role industry can play in this critical part of consumers’ diets,” Dawson said in a statement.