It’s a small letter that is printed on millions of food products sold in Tesco, Aldi, Asda and Sainsbury’s or Morrisons every day, but people have only just realized what the e symbol really means.
Along with the weight, barcode, and copyright logos, the tiny little e symbol is one of those pieces of information we’re so used to seeing printed on everything that we don’t even bother to notice it. .
But as one chip-buying mom once discovered, the symbol actually means “rated.”
The rating is the weight inside the product, and it basically means that manufacturers don’t individually weigh each package they sell, they simply set up their production lines so that the majority of products sold meet the package’s weight criteria. average.
A mum bought a bag of crisps from Aldi labeled 230g only to be horrified to find they were only 139g.
He said: “Over two-thirds of the packet was air – that’s why I decided to check it… First I put the whole bag of chips on the scale and it was 157g.”
The E-mark is not mandatory, but printing it on the packaging allows the manufacturer to sell them in any EU country without other specific national requirements and comply with EU printing regulations.
Yes, it’s an EU rule, but it’s used worldwide, including in Australia and the UK.
The EU’s Your Europe explains: “The ℮ symbol is not mandatory. However, if you attach it to your products, you can sell them in all EU countries without having to check whether you have complied with individual national requirements. The ℮ symbol indicates that the product meets the EU regulations on reporting volume or weight and measurement methods that you should use as a seller of prepackaged products.
“In order for the displayed quantity to be correct, packages marked with ℮ must meet the following requirements: in packages from the same batch, the average product quantity must be equal to or greater than the quantity stated on the package.
“Only a limited number of prepackaged products of the same batch may contain a smaller amount of product than is indicated on the package. This is called “tolerable negative error” and is defined in Annex 1 of EU legislation.
In practice, the odd bag of crisps or packet of cookies can legally be underweight with the e symbol, but if this happens every time, it breaks the law.
