They are demanding manufacturers replace tables about nutrition with visual guides such as pie charts or ''traffic lights'' to help them understand what they are eating.

The issuing of the inquiry's discussion paper yesterday also sparked a new row over a loophole in the labelling of genetically modified food.

The paper says, ''Food which has been genetically modified or irradiated must be labelled as such or have a label display.''

However, Greenpeace spokeswoman Laura Kelly said the claim was untrue.

Inquiry chairman Neal Blewett described the criticism as overboard.

''There are requirements in the code that genetically modified food be labelled, the issue is whether that labelling goes far enough,'' he told The Canberra Times. ''We are not saying there isn't a debate about the extent of GM in food.''

The inquiry was established by the Rudd Government in response to concerns about the lack of information and misleading claims on some products.

It has received almost 6000 submissions and more are expected before the inquiry holds public meetings.

The paper says, ''The main issues that were raised in submissions were country of origin labelling, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, methods of production (eg genetic modification, irradiation and nano-technology) and definitions of commonly used terms on food labels.''

Choice food policy adviser Clare Hughes said the current laws did not force manufacturers to reveal the origin of ingredients in their products.

''The definition of what is a genetically modified food in the food standards code excludes products that are highly refined such as oil derived purely from GM canola,'' she said.

''That loophole means we have a whole heap of processed food that could very well be containing oil that is derived from GM canola.''

She said it was disappointing the paper gave little indication of the inquiry's thinking.

''We were a little bit surprised it was a fairly lean document given the breath of food labelling but we are quite pleased that many of the issues we raised have been acknowledged,'' she said.

Dr Blewett, a former federal health minister, was not expecting the huge level of public interest in labelling laws.

For more on this story, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.

The inquiry will call for people to register their interest in attending the community consultations, with the Canberra session to be held on April 12.