Abstract
Background/Objectives:
Nutrition labels are potentially a major instrument for enabling consumers to make healthier food choices, but current insights into how nutrition labels are used by consumers in real-world shopping situations are limited, making the science-based formulation of new labelling policies and the evaluation of existing ones difficult. The objective of the European Union-funded project Food Labelling to Advance Better Education for Life (FLABEL) is to determine how nutrition labelling can affect dietary choices, consumer habits and food-related health issues.
Subjects/Methods:
A wide range of qualitative and quantitative consumer research methods is being used, including physical auditing, label sorting tasks, eye tracking and electrodermal response, structured interviews and analysis of retail scanner data.
Results:
First results from the project show that, on the basis of consumer responses, nutrition labels available in Europe can be categorised as non-directive, semidirective or directive. Penetration of nutrition labelling on food and drink packages in five product categories seems widespread, with the nutrition table on the back of packs being the most prominent format (found on 84% of over 37 000 products audited in 28 countries). The higher penetration observed in Northern Europe is paralleled by more public health campaigns in this region alerting consumers to nutrition labelling systems and elements covered therein (for example, calories, salt and fat).
Conclusions:
The findings to date indicate that nutrition labelling is widespread in Europe but formats and level of detail may differ between countries and products. Upcoming studies within FLABEL will decipher whether and how the various elements of nutrition labels affect attention, liking, understanding, use and dietary choices, and what the implications are for stakeholders such as policy makers.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bialkova S, van Trijp H, on behalf of the FLABEL consortium (2010): What determines consumer attention to labels? Food Qual Prefer, doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2010.07.001.
Bundesen C (1990). A theory of visual attention. Psych Rev 97, 4, 523–547.
Duncan J, Humphreys GW (1989). Visual search and stimulus similarity. Psych Rev 96, 433–458.
European Advisory Services (2004). The Introduction of Mandatory Nutrition Labelling in the European Union—Impact Assessment Undertaken for DG SANCO. European Commission, Brussels, p 76.
EC (2008). Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 January 2008 on the provision of food information to consumers (COM (2008) 40—not published in the official journal). Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/labellingnutrition/foodlabelling/publications/proposal_regulation_ep_council.pdf
Grunert K, Wills J (2007). A review of European research on consumer response to nutrition information on food labels. J Public Health 15, 385–399.
Ormrod RP, Grunert KG, on behalf of the FLABEL consortium: EU Food Nutrition Label Policy: identification and prioritisation of issues for policy assessment. (Paper submitted to Food Policy, still under review.)
Rayner K (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psych Bull 124, 3, 372–422.
Rayner M, Scarborough P, Stockley L (2004). Nutrient profiles: options for definitions for use in relation to food promotion and children's diets. Final report. British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group, Department of Public Health, University of Oxford: Oxford. Available at: http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/nutrientprofilingfullreport.pdf (accessed on March 2010).
Rugg G, McGeorge P (1997). The Sorting Techniques: a tutorial paper on card sorts, picture sorts and item sorts. Expert Syst 14, 2, 80–93.
Storcksdieck genannt Bonsmann S, Celemín LF, Larrañaga A, Egger S, Wills JM, Hodgkins C, Raats MM (2010). Penetration of nutrition information on food labels across the EU-27 plus Turkey: Eur J Clin Nutr [e-pub ahead of print 1 September 2010], doi:10.1038/ejcn.2010.179.
Treisman A, Gelade G (1980). A feature integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychol 12, 97–136.
Wilson MA (1995). Structuring Qualitative Data: Multidimensional Scalogram Analysis. In: Breakwell GM, Hammond S, Fife-Shaw C (eds). Research Methods in Psychology, 1st edn. Sage: London.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the 7th EU Framework Programme Small Collaborative Project FLABEL (Contract no. 211905) has been the major source of information for this article. The content of the article reflects only the views of the authors; the European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained in this article. The help of Laura Smillie in preparing this paper is gratefully acknowledged.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Consortia
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bonsmann, S., Celemín, L., Grunert, K. et al. Food Labelling to Advance Better Education for Life. Eur J Clin Nutr 64 (Suppl 3), S14–S19 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2010.204
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2010.204
Keywords
This article is cited by
-
Effects of food nutrition labels on the health awareness of school-age children
BMC Public Health (2022)
-
Pharmaceutical Benefit–Risk Communication Tools: A Review of the Literature
Drug Safety (2017)
-
Use of food labels by adolescents to make healthier choices on snacks: a cross-sectional study from Sri Lanka
BMC Public Health (2016)
-
Nutrition Labeling to Prevent Obesity: Reviewing the Evidence from Europe
Current Obesity Reports (2012)