Step into a grocery store in France and you’re liable to see a green, yellow or red score on the front of most packaged foods: a green “A” for the healthiest, a red “E” for the least nutritious. Zip across the globe to Chile, and that traffic light-like label becomes a stop sign, warning consumers when a food contains a high amount of sugar, salt, saturated fats or calories.
Today, more than a dozen countries require that companies print nutritional labels on the front of food packages – a move that’s come as the rate of diet-related diseases, like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and obesity, increases worldwide.
