Bag for healthier life
Dorset Trading Standards Service's aims are shaped by National Indicators achieving outcomes for children, young people and adults around health and obesity. These indicators help to inform the work that we do.
Dorset Council Council's Strategic aims include;
- The improvement of life chances for children and young people (healthy eating for children),
- ensuring improved health (healthy eating for adults) and
- Strengthening Dorset's economy (consumer and business education).
The trading standards service aims then feed into this and include
- 'Create informed and educated consumers in order to help people help themselves' and
- 'Provide special help to vulnerable persons in order to safeguard well-being'.
Education around what we eat that changes peoples eating habits for the better therefore fits aims at all levels.
Dorset Trading Standards Service see the Food Standards Agency’s Traffic Light ‘Signposting’ scheme as one great way to interpret nutritional labelling into a really simple format which consumers can use to help make balanced food choices when considering amounts of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in prepacked food.
However we realised that lots of food was not voluntarily marked with ‘signposting’ colours, this was not the only format for front of pack nutritional labelling information, and many items of prepacked food had no front of pack nutritional labelling at all anyway.
What was needed was a way consumers could easily convert nutritional information into red, amber and green ‘Signposting’ for themselves. We also saw that the time consumer’s needed this information was when they were choosing and buying their food.
There is an increasing awareness amongst society that it is no longer acceptable to use a new plastic bag each time you go shopping. Cotton reusable shopping bags are becoming more and more widespread. Dorset County Council Waste Management Service are keen to encourage consumers to shop ‘SMART’ (Save Money and Reduce Trash) by bringing their own, and reusing, carrier bags. Therefore partnering Waste Services in this initiative seemed the natural choice, we saw ourselves as putting the 'Health' into a 'BAG FOR LIFE'.
Aims and Objectives
- To promote Traffic Light ‘Signposting’ as a tool to aid healthy balanced food choices
- To produce a format for communicating Traffic Light ‘Signposting’ information to consumers when they need it, i.e. as they chose and buy their food
- To encourage waste reduction amongst Dorset consumers.
- To work toward Dorset county councils identified aims.
Partners
- Dorset trading standards
- Dorset waste management
Methodology
Research was undertaken to identify what material was available to consumers to help educate them about the principal of Traffic Light ‘Signposting’ and how they can practically convert nutritional information into red, amber and green bands for themselves. The messages within the Food Standards Agencies publication ‘Using traffic lights to make healthier choices’ were seen as a simple and effective explanation of ‘Signposting’.
This publication had an attached ‘Food Shopping Card’ to aid consumer choice while out shopping. This was the message we wanted consumers to have, but unlike a small card that could be left at home, misplaced, or damaged, we wanted a message that was large, colourful and had to be physically used as part of the food shopping process.
A reusable cotton shopping bag seemed to be the answer. It had two sides that could be printed with messages that could fit both the healthy eating and waste reduction aims. We realised from the start that any message had to be visual and simple to be effective.
It was therefore decided that the healthy eating ‘Signposting’ message would be a simplified reproduction of the Food Standards Agencies ‘Food Shopping Card’.
The waste reduction message would be in support of the Waste and Resources Action Programme’s campaign ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ that aims to highlight the fact that wasted food is a waste of money and a major contributor to climate change.
As the Food Standards Agencies publication ‘Using traffic lights to make healthier choices’ was such a simple and effective explanation of ‘Signposting’ we also decided to distribute these inside our cotton shopping bag as one combined resource. So was born the ‘BAG FOR Healthier LIFE’.
Promotion
Dorset Trading Standards Service runs an annual summer trailer tour to engage and promote important messages directly to consumers. For the summer of 2008 the trailer tour theme centred around healthy eating and waste reduction. Venues for the tour included Dorset’s food shows, food fairs and food events. Our ‘BAG FOR Healthier LIFE’ was handed out to consumers who attended our display and who completed a simple evaluation questionnaire.
Resources
The main resource was the sourcing and printing of the cotton shopping bags. By forming a partnership with Waste Management Services, and receiving part funding from the ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign, the cost of this resource became more manageable for an initial print run of 5000 bags.
Evaluation
The evaluation for the ‘BAG FOR Healthier LIFE’ was based around the answers consumers gave to how they would use the resource on the simple questionnaire completed during our healthy eating/ waste reduction trailer tour.
To date nearly 100% of approximately 2500 respondents state that they will be using the bag regularly when they do their food shop, and those asked whether they would use it to make nutritional decisions generally said that they would.
Lessons Learned
Demand from consumers for this ‘free’ resource has been outstanding and our stock of bags has not lasted long. We are currently trying to seek funding to produce additional bags.
Reliance was put onto having the Food Standards Agencies ‘Signposting’ booklet as part of this resource. However we have had some difficulty obtaining more than a standard Local Authority allocation of booklets from Food Standards Agency Publications.
Evaluation to date concentrates generally on the intended benefit the consumers visiting the display said they would gain from using the ‘BAG FOR Healthier LIFE’. What was clear to us was that we were not getting an evaluation into how the resource had actually been used and what changes the resource had brought about to consumer shopping and eating habits.
Feedback to date has been really positive and our resource has been highlighted across our South West region as an example of best practice. We love to see the endorsement from shoppers too as our bags are carried out and about on Dorset’s streets!
Future Developments
Our evaluation into the effective usefulness of the Dorset ‘BAG FOR Healthier LIFE’ now needs to be taken forward to see how the resource has actually changed shoppers buying and eating habits. It is therefore proposed that the next stage will include working with a target group to see if and how change is brought about. A successful evaluation at this stage too may then open avenues for new funding opportunities to enable us to produce more of our ‘BAG FOR Healthier LIFE’.
Contact Details
Contact Name: Jonathan Harris
Job Title: Senior Trading Standards Officer
Phone: 01305 224012
Email: tradingstandards@dorsetcc.gov.uk
Fax: 01305 224297
Website: www.dorsetforyou.com/tradingstandards
Organisation: Dorset County Council Trading Standards Service
Address: Colliton Annexe, Colliton Park, Dorchester, Dorset DT1 1XG