Cals labeling - mandatory in your country?

kachochan

Hi guys, here's the question:

is the information about the calories (and nutrition) mandatory in your country?

I just found out that it's NOT mandatory in Japan.
What is mandatory is to list all the ingredients, but basically companies can decide not to provide any information about the calories.

Which, not surprisingly, they very often do.
I flip the boxes with sushi and salads and see nothing except the ingredients and the date of expiry (that they do religiously).
Same with a number of sweets and snacks, obentos and beans mixes, spring rolls, tempura etc.

Japan sells a lot of things that live only one day (or even half a day), and also they have been famous for very healthy low calorie cooking, so I guess they just don't bother.

Well, I ended up researching and guessing a lot.
And my principle is that I don't buy it if I don't know the calories.

Although I understand the reason why it's not concerning for them, it's a little bit annoying sometimes.
But I could figure out most of the foods that I eat regularly, so that's all right.

Just curious what it's like in your countries.

zyxst

Mandatory in Canada and the U.S..

divacat80

I guess they're so used to eating healthy and eating in the right amounts that they're still not concerned about the worldwide obesity epidemic.
You can either copy their eating habits and portion sizes or eat foods made from scratch at home.

Here in Spain not everything is calorie-labeled, specially if it's sort of homemade (like bakery stuff, non-industrial pastries and restaurant food). But all of those foods only have place on my cheat days and I try not to worry about that on those days because I try to eat reasonable portions.

clairy1982

It's recently become a legal requirement in South Africa.

mfp_1

It's not mandatory in the EU:
http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/consumers/product_labelling_and_packaging/l21092_en.htm