Making drinks firms display sugar in spoonfuls on cans would break European rules

FOOD companies cannot be forced to tell parents how many teaspoons of sugar are in fizzy drinks because it would break European Union rules, a minister has admitted.

TV chef Jamie Oliver, who has championed healthy eating, proposed the idea to make packaged-food labels easier to understand than under current rules where sugar content is given in grams.

Jane Ellison, the public health minister, said that if the Government wanted to make the change it would have to issue a consultation, provide scientific evidence and prove it would not constitute a barrier to trade.

“Labelling is an EU competence so member states cannot mandate additional forms of expression, such as spoonfuls of sugar, for pre-packed food,” she said. “Any such form of labelling would need to be agreed with the Commission before it was implement- ed, to avoid future infraction proceedings.” But companies could represent sugar content in spoonfuls voluntarily, Ms Ellison said, promising that civil servants would “look carefully at the issue”.

Oliver, who has spearheaded a campaign demanding that sugar content appears on packages in spoonfuls rather than grams, handed out bottles of fizzy drinks to MPs in October with modified labels that showed a bottle of Pepsi contained 14 teaspoons of sugar.

The minister’s admission is likely to infuriate parents and encourage calls for Britain to gain more legal sovereignty as David Cameron, the Prime Minister, renegotiates the terms of the country’s EU membership.

It also comes amid growing pressure on the Government to impose a tax on sugary drinks and snacks to discourage children from buying them and make parents more aware of how much sugar their children are consuming.

But a levy looks unlikely to be included in the Government’s childhood obesity strategy, due to be published early next year.

Liz McInnes, the Labour MP for Heywood and Middleton, called for the Government to act.

She said: “We need a clear, effective, easy-to-understand labelling system, and the teaspoons-of-sugar measurement is the right way to go.”