DUNCAN STEPHENSON
Campaigns, Policy and Communications
CAMPAIGN :
Alcohol Calorie Labelling
One of the first campaigns I led at the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) was to raise awareness of public confusion around how many calories are in everyday alcoholic beverages. For regular drinkers, between 5-10% of their calorie intake comes from alcoholic drinks - and, in some cases, considerably more. Despite this, alcohol doesn’t have to carry calorie labels. Therefore, it’s no wonder that almost 90% of us simply don’t know, or seriously underestimate, how many calories are in our typical tipple.
I developed a campaign to raise awareness of this issue, which was backed by two thirds of the public who supported the idea. Who knew that a glass of wine has the same calories as a sugar covered donut?
Campaign Results :
Following the huge media and public interest in the campaign, I developed a partnership with the Portman Group to do further consumer
research into alcohol labelling. As a result of this successful profile raising campaign and continued lobbying the UK Government committed to introducing calorie labelling for alcohol in the out of home sector and now more than half of alcohol carries calorie labelling information.
FILM : Alcohol Calorie Labelling media coverage.
