Canada's #1 food brand, President's Choice®, removes all artificial flavours and artificial colours

BRAMPTON, ON, Oct. 29, 2014 /CNW/ - (TSX:L) – Loblaw Companies Limited has successfully achieved its pledge to remove all artificial flavours and artificial colours from the full range of more than 4,000 President's Choice^® brand products. In recent years, these additives have been associated with consumer concerns around hyperactivity, allergies, and various other serious conditions and diseases*.

In 2012, the company began its journey to strike from its ingredient lists all flavours and colours created by chemical synthesis. Due to the brand's long-standing high standards for ingredients, most President's Choice^® products were already free of these additives. Others have since been reformulated. Many products presented significant challenges – particularly in categories like candies, desserts, ice creams, and entrees where bright colours and unique flavours are the norm. Today, all President's Choice^® production is free of artificial flavours and artificial colours.

"For thirty years, President's Choice has been at the forefront of Canadian tastes and food interests," said Galen G. Weston, Executive Chairman and President, Loblaw Companies Limited. "By removing all artificial flavours and artificial colours we are proudly carrying on that leadership role."

More than 4,000 products sell in Loblaw's various retail banners under the President's Choice^® brand – the number-one consumer packaged goods brand in Canada. Loblaw has consistently used the President's Choice^® brand to leadCanada's food and grocery industry, driving new tastes and flavours as well as a range of commitments around sustainable seafood, animal welfare, sodium reduction and the now the elimination of artificial colours and flavours.

This latest President's Choice® innovation is celebrated in a television ad, currently airing, which features colourful food images, and concludes with Galen G. Weston in the President's Choice^® test kitchen, proclaiming: "Food is colourful enough. That's why, as of now, no President's Choice products will be produced with any artificial flavour or artificial colour. Not one."

The ad is part of a new era of President's Choice^® defined by a new rallying cry – CRAVE MORE – which encourages Canadians to expect more of their food.

* Centre for Science in the Public Interest, 2014

About Loblaw Companies Limited

Loblaw Companies Limited is Canada's food and pharmacy leader, the nation's largest retailer, and the majority unitholder of Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust. Loblaw provides Canadians with grocery, pharmacy, health and beauty, apparel, general merchandise, banking, and wireless mobile products and services. With more than 2,300 corporate, franchised and associate-owned locations, Loblaw, its franchisees, and associate-owners employ approximately 192,000 full- and part-time employees, making it one of Canada's largest private sector employers.

Loblaw's purpose - Live Life Well - puts first the needs and well-being of Canadians who make one billion transactions annually in the Company's stores.  Loblaw is positioned to meet and exceed those needs in many ways: convenient locations; more than 1,050 grocery stores that span the value spectrum from discount to specialty; full-service pharmacies at more than 1,250 Shoppers Drug Mart and Pharmaprix locations and more than 500 Loblaw locations; no-fee banking with PC Financial; affordable Joe Fresh fashion and family apparel; and three of Canada's top consumer brands in Life Brand®, no name® and President's Choice®. Through the PC Plus™ and Shoppers Optimum® loyalty programs, more than one in every three Canadians are rewarded for shopping with the companies.  For more information, visit Loblaw's website at www.loblaw.ca and Loblaw's issuer profile at www.sedar.com.