Source: Beijing Youth Daily
The production date is difficult to identify The ingredient list number "pocket" Bundled sales block the "shelf life" Beijing Youth Daily reporter investigation - food labels are difficult to distinguish "true appearance"
"Lau, can you help me see where the milk was produced?" What number was it produced? The words are too small for me to see clearly..." Have you ever encountered such a plea for help from the elderly when you visited the supermarket?" Have you ever seen an elderly person shopping with a magnifying glass? As the "main force" of offline physical department store consumption, many elderly people shop, especially when purchasing food products, the illegible food labels on some prepackaged goods have become a stumbling block for them to buy goods.
In response to these phenomena generally reflected by the elderly, the Beijing Youth Daily reporter recently visited some supermarkets in Beijing and investigated the labels of nearly 40 commodities such as milk, yogurt, milk tea, mineral water, chocolate, black sesame paste, children's snacks, etc. The results show that there are indeed some commodities that are difficult to identify with labels: some commodity production dates are difficult to find and difficult to recognize, some commodity ingredients are pocket-sized and color-colored with packaging, and some bundled promotional goods even "hide" key information such as production dates and shelf life ......
Survey one
The production date is difficult to find and difficult to recognize, and the outer packaging is "mixed" and matched.
The date of manufacture and shelf life are the most important information for consumers when purchasing goods, which is closely related to food safety. During the investigation, the reporter of Beiqing Daily found two major problems.
First, although the production date has a fixed area, it is difficult to distinguish, because the color is too light or because the contrast with the packaging background pattern is small. In front of the shelves of Shouhang Supermarket (Xiluoyuan store), consumer Ms. Zhang was anxious to find the production date of the goods: "Obviously, the production date is written in the bottle cap, but why can't I find it?" The product that Ms. Zhang is buying is Hongrun brand Red Oil Pixian Watercress, with a net content of 500 grams per bottle, and at first glance there is no word on the top of the golden bottle cap and around it.
Beiqing Daily reporter took the goods to the bright light to adjust the angle repeatedly, and finally found a line of laser spray code words at the top of the bottle cap, the font color is the same as the bottle cap color, and can only be faintly distinguished by the shadow illuminated by the light: "2021/12/23", and this string of numbers can not be seen at once, and need to constantly adjust the angle to read out sequentially. If touched by hand, the text is slightly raised. "I can't see how to adjust the angle of my presbyopia, this production date has simply become 'Braille'!" Ms. Zhang complained.
It is not uncommon for goods like this to indicate the date of manufacture but are difficult to discern. In Carrefour (CapitaMal Grand Canyon store), the Beiqing Daily reporter saw a "orchard old farmer" brand amber walnut kernel, the bottom of the tank is a circular dark blue area, the production date is "hidden" in it, the font color is almost the same as the dark blue background, if not placed in the bright place to adjust the angle carefully look for it is difficult to see. In addition, the production date of Ershang white jade brand duck blood tofu is marked on the front of the packaging box, but due to the use of laser spraying, the contrast with the packaging background pattern is not obvious.
The same problem arises with the packaging of bottled beverages. For example, a Baishengshan "Ben Wang" bottled soda sold by Wumart Hypermarket (Shuangchuang Center Store) has a production date printed on the gray glass bottle, located under the cap, but the font color is also gray, even if you look closely, it is difficult to see the text on it, and you can faintly see the words "20201224". Baisui mountain "Ben Wang" bottle of natural mineral water, printed on the blue transparent glass bottle production date is also difficult to distinguish.
In addition to the above-mentioned difficult to distinguish due to the proximity of the font color of the production date to the background color of the product packaging, there are also products that are not obvious due to the background pattern "too flower". Beiqing Daily reporter saw at Carrefour (CapitaMal Grand Canyon store) that a Sichuan-style sausage pot with rice from hi indicates that the production date is located at the top of the pot spray code, but the top of the pot in addition to the name of the product, but also covered with a colorful pattern background, the production date is white characters black edges and the font is very thin, in front of such a fancy background has no sense of existence.
See the front of the package, see the back of the package, see the bottom of the package, see the bottle body, see the coding place... The Beiqing Daily reporter also found the second major problem: there are some commodities with wide production dates marked in a wide position, which is also very laborious to find, and it needs to be turned over and carefully searched. Not only is the position of the label arbitrary, but the font direction of some production dates is also crooked, which adds a lot of difficulty to consumers.
For example, there is a "Tang Jiaohu" brand original Ceylon hand-brewed milk tea, the outer packaging of the background color is orange, wrapped by a layer of plastic sealing film. The product information on the cup body indicates that the date of manufacture is marked on the shrink film, but there is no fixed area. The Beiqing Daily reporter compared three cups of the same milk tea and found that the production date labeling positions were inconsistent: some were printed on the product name, some were printed on the right side of the product name, and some were printed near the product information description. Xiangpiaopiao brand milk tea also has the same problem, some production dates are marked at the bottom of the cup, and some are marked in different positions of the outer packaging shrink film.
Of course, the Beiqing Daily reporter also found in the investigation that many commodities have set up special areas to print production dates for consumer identification. Such as Hollywood brand Q ti, Gree Gao brand Baiqi biscuits, Jiangzhong monkey mushroom biscuits, Golden Gong King King special grade ham sausage, etc., are in the box or packaging bag side, bottom and other positions reserved white area, and packaging background color in stark contrast, and with black text to indicate the production date, consumers are easy to identify.
Survey II
"Pocket small characters" test eyesight "sea of words" is vague and difficult to distinguish
In addition to the production date and shelf life, the various ingredients in the food ingredient list are also an important reference for consumers to buy goods, raw milk, reconstituted milk, sugar content, food additives... Consumers need to see this information clearly in order to buy it on demand. However, the Beiqing Daily reporter found in the investigation that some label fonts are very pocket-sized, and it seems that the content is extremely detailed and "should be marked", and the actual key information is submerged in the vast "sea of words".
In the Wumei supermarket located on the first floor of The Tiantongyuan Guotai Mall, the Beiqing Daily reporter randomly selected several commodities to view the logo text on its outer packaging, and found that the size of the logo text on the outer packaging of the goods was not uniform: some fonts were large and clear, and some of the logo text was called pocket-sized, young people needed to be carefully identified in front of their eyes to see clearly, and the elderly needed to use a magnifying glass to barely see clearly.
Taking milk with a large daily demand as an example, in the face of many milk brands, consumers often focus on understanding its protein and calcium content when purchasing. On the outer packaging box of Terensu pure milk, the nutrition facts list is marked in the blue area on the side of the carton, and the white font looks relatively clear, but the text inside the table is only about two millimeters wide, and for the elderly with bad eyes, it takes a lot of effort to see clearly. Similarly, on the outer packaging of a box of Ammushi Greek-style yogurt, different sides are marked with different contents, of which the three words "Anmushi" are each about 7 mm wide and about 8 mm long, but at the ingredient and nutrition table, although the combination of blue characters on a white background is quite eye-catching, the length of each word is only about 2 mm, the width is only 1 mm, and it is not easy to see clearly at once.
The Beiqing Daily reporter found in the investigation that the more consumers care about the information, the more difficult it is to find in the packaging of the goods. For example, the southern black sesame paste prints the ingredient list and the nutrition ingredient list in the crack area of the bag, and the consumer has to turn over and over to find it for half a day to see these details. An imported dark chocolate, on the front side is not marked with the word cocoa butter, only in the back of the description area marked "Maruga salty cocoa butter dark chocolate", and the font is extremely pocket-sized, consumers do not carefully distinguish it is difficult to notice the words "cocoa butter".
In addition to the products sold in supermarkets, online shopping products also have the same problem. The Xu Fuji small pill pancake purchased by the Beiqing Daily reporter from the online mall, the huge packaging bag, with the label of ingredients, nutritional ingredients and other contents, accounts for less than one-tenth of the area. On the white label, in addition to the brand name, the width of the ingredients of the pancake itself, the hint of allergenic substances, and the words in the nutrition ingredient list are only 1 mm.
Survey THREE
Key information is obscured, bundling has "traps"
Transparent tape tied with multiple ham sausages, bottled yogurt wrapped in gift bags, whole packages of soda... Consumers who often visit supermarkets know that the phenomenon of food bundling such as bread, yogurt, milk, and soy products is more common in major supermarkets. Beiqing Daily reporter investigation found that in order to facilitate sales, some merchants deliberately take a blindfold method, only marked the production date on the packaging, but avoided the shelf life, and customers in the selection of most of them only pick up a simple glance at the packaging and throw it into the shopping basket, few people will carefully check whether there is expiration, how long the shelf life is, etc.
On the bread shelves of a supermarket, 6 sticks of peach and plum puff pastry bread were packed into a "family pack" plastic bag, and a prominent yellow label was posted on the shelf that read: "From March 11 to 17, peach and plum cream stuffed puff pastry bread is 10 yuan 6 bags." The Beiqing Daily reporter noted that this "family dress" can only see the production date of 2 loaves of bread, and the production date of the rest of the bread is either blocked by the large font on the outer packaging bag, or pressed inside and cannot be seen at all. In front of another shelf not far away, the Beiqing Daily reporter saw that 10 bulk Shuanghui chicken sausages were tightly wrapped in scotch tape, and only the production date could be seen on the outer skin of individual sausages.
Buy two get one free, buy one get one free... In the yogurt sales areas of major supermarkets, the phenomenon of buying and giving is very common. Beiqing Daily reporter saw in the above supermarket that the two boxed yogurts sold by the Sanyuan brand were bundled with tape and marked with the words "buy one get one free", while after the whole box of yogurt was bundled together, only the production date of the surface yogurt could be seen, and the production date of the following layer of yogurt was tightly covered. Other yogurt brands sold in the supermarket, such as Uno Fermented Milk, Yili Old Yogurt, and Junlebao Jane Alcohol Yogurt, also have the problem of obscuring the production date of some goods due to the purchase and gift activities, and cannot display the identification information of each product.
In the supermarket's refrigerated cooked food sales area, a double elbow flower ham sausage is bundled with a porcelain bowl, and the rubber strips firmly entangle the two, and the production date of the ham sausage cannot be seen at all. In the bulk food area, although small snacks such as jelly, biscuits, and sugar are each individually packaged, the small foods that have been combined by the staff in the store are sealed in a plastic bag, and it is difficult for consumers to see the production date and ingredient list of each small food.
In addition to food, there are also problems in daily necessities that are difficult to distinguish the shelf life after bundling, such as Mr. Vermeer's kitchen special package, Shu Skin Jia foam hand sanitizer special package, Xia ShiLian black and bright nourishing dandruff shampoo... All are the original manufacturers of the buy-one-get-one-free special packaging, but they all obscure the production date of the goods.
Follow-up
There will be clearer requirements for food labelling
Are there any specific standards for labeling prepackaged foods? When will these real-world problems encountered by consumers be solved? The Beijing Youth Daily reporter learned that at present, the market supervision department has two main bases for the management of prepackaged food labels, namely, the General Rules for Prepackaged Food Labeling and the Food Safety Law. Compared with the Food Safety Law, the General Principles of Labeling of Prepackaged Foods provide more detailed provisions on the content of labels.
What is a food label? That is, the words, graphics, symbols and all descriptions on food packaging. Article 2 of the basic requirements of the General Principles clearly states that food labels should be clear, eye-catching and durable, and should be easy for consumers to identify and read when purchasing. For this basic requirement, what are the specific quantitative criteria for text size? It is mentioned in the General Principles that when the maximum surface area of prepackaged food packaging or packaging containers is greater than 35 square centimeters, the height of the text, symbols and numbers of the mandatory labeling contents such as production date and shelf life, ingredient list, net content and so on shall not be less than 1.8 mm.
The indication of dates is also covered in the General Principles, e.g. the date of production and shelf life of prepackaged food should be clearly indicated. If the date label adopts the form of "see a part of the packaging", the specific part of the packaging should be marked. Date indications shall not be affixed, reprinted or tampered with. Article 67 of the Food Safety Law also stipulates that prepackaged food should be labeled on the packaging. The label shall indicate the name, specification, net content, production date, ingredient or ingredient list, the name, address, contact information of the producer, and the shelf life and other 9 items.
The Beiqing Daily reporter noted that although the relevant laws and regulations stipulate that the specific parts of the packaging should be marked with the date of production and shelf life in the food label, but no clearer provisions have been made on this, is it feasible to describe it like "see the code"? In addition, the relevant laws and regulations do not clearly stipulate the problem that the label text and the packaging background color are similar and cannot be recognized. The Beiqing Daily reporter found in the investigation that many "pocket words" did reach 1.8 mm or even 2 mm, but it is still not easy for the elderly to see clearly.
The Beiqing Daily reporter learned that in order to further standardize food labeling, as early as July 2020, the "Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Food Labeling (Draft for Comment)" was publicly solicited for comments on the website of the State Administration for Market Regulation. Although the measures have not yet been promulgated, relatively specific requirements for the size and clarity of food labels can be seen in the draft for comments.
Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the China Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law Research Association, said that the trademarks, slogans, etc. of the goods produced by some enterprises will always let consumers see at a glance, place them in the most prominent and obvious position, and weaken the important information that is beneficial to consumers such as production date, shelf life, ingredient composition, etc., which is obviously not conducive to maintaining consumers' "right to know".
In view of this situation, Chen Yinjiang said that a good faith enterprise should put the rights and interests of consumers in the first place, put the key content of consumer concerns in a more prominent position, a small food label, reflecting the business philosophy of the enterprise and the attitude of being responsible for consumers; at the same time, he also called for the revision of standards and the introduction of new regulations for food labeling as soon as possible, to restrain the behavior of enterprises, and law enforcement departments should also increase law enforcement.
This edition of the article / reporters Wang Wei, Wang Bin, Zhao Tingting, Li Jia