The Department of Health has announced its new staff line-up after taking on the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) work on nutrition and food reformulation.
Led by Clair Baynton, deputy director nutrition science and delivery, the team consists of: Alison Tedstone, head of nutrition science; Corinne Vaughan, head of nutrition delivery; Alette Addison, salt; and Stephen Airey, saturated fat and energy.
However, it remains tight-lipped on targets to reduce salt and saturated fats, which were set by the FSA. A spokeswoman would only say: "Further information will be available in due course the Department of Health will continue to work with industry on reformulation and provision of nutritional information to consumers."
The FSA had announced specific targets to reduce the saturated fat content in plain sweet and savoury biscuits, and plain cakes by at least 10%, and 5% in non-plain biscuits (those not containing chocolate) by 2012. A target of 1g of salt per 100g bread was also set for 2012.
Policies including working with manufacturers to reformulate foods to reduce salt, saturated fat and sugar levels, and reducing portion size, moved from the FSA to the Department of Health along with nutritional labelling on foods, calorie information in restaurants, nutrition surveys and scientific advice on nutrition.
The Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) took on food labelling policy, where it does not relate to food safety or nutrition. A Defra spokeswoman refused to give details of staff responsible.
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