The development comes as the store published its Lie of the Label 2 report earlier this week, an update on a study first carried out five years ago.

In the report, the retailer accuses its own industry of trying to hoodwink consumers with misleading health claims on grocery products. The store is calling for a radical re-think of the regulations governing the nutrition labelling of products which it says allows some companies to confuse consumers.

Co-op labelling on its own-brand products now features the so-called 'full eight plus one' nutrition categories: calories, fat, saturated fat, salt, protein, carbohydrate, sugars, fibre and additionally fruit and veg to indicate to consumers if any fruit and veg is contained and how much this counts towards five-a-day. If a product, such as a beef burger, contains no fruit and veg, this is highlighted by a nil score for that category. The recommendation 'Always try to eat 5 x 80g portions of fruit and vegetables per day' is printed on all nutrition labels.

Although strictly speaking there is no legal precedent for this sort of five-a-day suggestion on processed food, the Co-op is not expecting an adverse reaction from the Food Standards Agency (FSA). 'We think that the FSA is sympathetic to what we are doing because we are just helping consumers make more informed choices.'

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