Making healthier choices for you and your family can be very confusing. Our continuous vision is to provide you with the relevant information to help you make healthier choices. We believe that by providing transparent and easy to understand nutrition information on all our products, we can meet this vision, which is why we have introduced a new approach to labelling to help you achieve a balanced diet.
This approach is called the Nestlé Nutritional Compass® and has been introduced across Nestlé products worldwide. Below is an interactive example from Nestlé UK.
On some of our smaller packs, where the space is quite small, you will see the GDA for Calories only, for example on a single KitKat Chunky or Aero bar. This will give you the total calories contained in a serving of the product (as consumed) such as in a tube of sweets.
GDAs are guidelines for healthy adults and children and are recommendations for a healthy diet. They are a guide to the different amount of nutrients you and your family should aim to consume each day to maintain good health. Using the GDA information on our packs, it makes it easy to see how a product relates to your overall daily consumption, allowing you to make informed decisions about what you are eating. It also allows you to compare foods and choose which products are best for you. Because we all vary in different ways such as size, activity levels and our gender, we all have different requirements, adults will typically have higher requirements and children typically lower. For this reason, GDAs are meant to be used as a guide. We provide the GDA information contained in a serving of the product for our adult's (men and women) and children's (aged 5-10) products.
Most foods carry Nutrition Labelling, and this is given in standardised formats listing the same nutrients in the same order, using the same names. However, food companies have a choice between providing basic information, known as ”The Big 4’ (i.e. Energy, Protein, Carbohydrate and Fat) or ”The Big 8’ (i.e. Energy, Protein, Carbohydrate, Sugars, Fat, Saturates, Fibre and Sodium). The information has to be given per 100g/ml of product, but is also given per typical serving. Manufacturers can give additional nutrition information if they wish, such as levels of added vitamins and minerals. Our policy at Nestlé is to provide you with ”The Big 8’ wherever space allows. If space does not permit, full Nutrition Information on The Big 8 can be found on our website. To make it easier for you, we have included a salt equivalent figure in addition to sodium. It is not compulsory for manufacturers to give any nutrition information, unless a specific nutrition claim is made, such as ”low-fat’, ”high fibre’ or ”source of calcium’. In these cases, the claims must be quantified by giving the actual figures in the nutrition panel. While claims such as 85% fat free appear more meaningful, such a food still contains 15% fat. To make a claim of a low fat food, the food must contain no more than 3% fat. By using the nutrition information and GDAs on Nestlé products, you can compare different products when shopping to keep an eye on what you are eating. It will become easy to see how you can fit a variety of foods into a healthy diet and where you might need to think more carefully about the choices you make.
The information in this box provides key nutritional information about the product. This could be a message relating to an ingredient in the product or it could address issues of public concern, e.g., amount of fat, sugar or salt contained in the product.
This provides contact details of our Nestlé Consumer Services Careline in case of a query or concern about a Nestlé product. This service is free of charge, and we are always happy to help.
Since 1866, nutrition has been at the heart of our business. That’s why we have our brand logo at the centre of our compass.
This box provides tips, advice and information related to the product, for example, offering information on how to include the food as part of a balanced diet.