The impact of front-of-pack nutrition labels on consumer product evaluation and choice

This month’s featured paper is from Public Health Nutrition and is entitled 'The impact of front-of-pack nutrition labels on consumer product evaluation and choice: an experimental study'.In the last five years, front of pack (FOP) nutritional labelling has been a topic of significant attention in public health fields. Regulatory moves in many countries suggest that evidence of the impact of FOP labelling is an urgent requirement, however, little testing of developed systems and their impact on consumer choice has been carried out. Two FOP presentation systems have now achieved widespread use on consumer food products. These are the ‘Traffic Light Label’ system (TLL) and the ‘Percentage Daily Intake’ system (PDI). The presumption of these labelling systems is that a measurable impact on consumer purchase intent occurs in direct relation to the nutritional status of the item, as expressed by the label – i.e. that consumers are more likely to choose products viewed as having a more ‘positive’ nutritional status compared to others in the same product category. Results of the Research In the study, consumer responses to four nutritional label treatments were measured – a standard sized PDI label, a standard sized TLL, a large TLL and no FOP nutritional label. The treatments were applied to four similar boxed cereal products, two nutritionally ‘good’ and two nutritionally ‘poor’.Findings show that nutritional labels, when present, were seen and proce...
Source: The Nutrition Society - Category: Nutrition Authors: Source Type: news