Red light, green light: Food choice made easier

A new food labeling system has been established in certain cafeterias, called “Green Light, Red Light, Eat Right”; they are putting green, yellow, and red stickers on foods to encourage healthier eating. Foods with green stickers are deemed healthy, foods with yellow stickers are less healthy, and food with red stickers are unhealthy. While I like the idea of this system, I am skeptical of certain aspects. How do they determine which foods they put each sticker on? There is an inevitable risk in this design. Consumers won’t have to make healthy eating decisions; it is likely they will rely solely on what the cafeteria labels as healthy when selecting food, allowing for bias to be made by the cafeteria. If this system ever becomes well-established in our society, it could be easily tainted by producers buying the “rights” to green stickers.