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Nutrients
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Nutrition and Food Labelling: The Impact of Established Front of...
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Nutrition and Food Labelling: The Impact of Established Front of Pack (FoP) Label Systems on Behaviour

A special issue of Nutrients (ISSN 2072-6643). This special issue belongs to the section "Nutritional Policies and Education for Health Promotion".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2020) | Viewed by 20932

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Robert Hamlin

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Marketing, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand
Interests: food consumer behaviour; package design and communication; food marketing; nutritional labels
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Lisa McNeill

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Marketing, University of Otago, New Zealand
Interests: food labeling; food marketing; nutrition; health and lifestyles

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nutritional labelling of food products has been a focus of policy for more than forty years as governments grapple with the consequences of modern highly processed foods and sophisticated marketing. Over this period, attempts to inform consumers by nutrition information panels (NIPs) on the back of food products have been supplemented by attempts to persuade them by front of pack (FoP) labels on the prime facings.

These efforts have not been well coordinated, and many FoP systems that display a wide variety of architectures have now become established around the world (traffic light label (TLL), percentage daily intake (PDI), health star rating (HSR), Chilean warning labels (CWL) and ‘tick’ formats).

Some of these established FoP systems are voluntary, and some are mandatory. However, all of them are poorly supported by research that directly investigates their effectiveness in the marketplace and that directly measures their impact upon consumer and supplier behaviour. What research does exist is inconclusive with regard to the value of these systems to the communities that they serve.

This Special Issue aims to address this weakness in the literature and will be dedicated to research that directly examines the effectiveness of these established FoP label formats. 

The call is therefore for research articles that measure the impact of established FoP systems on consumer behaviour and choice, and also on manufacturer behaviours such as formulation, design and promotion. Quantitative articles that measure the impact of any established FoP label format on unprompted consumer choice, either by the use of designs that conceal the purpose of the research, or by the use of ‘in market’ data/observation, will be particularly welcome. Similar research that measures changes in food industry behaviour at any level in response to the application of established FoP label formats will also be welcome.

Prof. Robert Hamlin
Prof. Lisa McNeill
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Nutrients is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Nutritional labelling
  • Front of pack (FoP) label
  • Food policy
  • Consumer behaviour

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 13371 KiB  
Article
What Makes a Front-of-Pack Nutritional Labelling System Effective: The Impact of Key Design Components on Food Purchases
by Laurent Muller and Bernard Ruffieux
Nutrients 2020, 12(9), 2870; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12092870 - 19 Sep 2020
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 6034
Abstract
The relative impacts on food purchases of many alternative front-of-pack nutritional labelling systems were tested, with various methods—from opinion pool to nationwide experiments. Clearly, some systems induce better purchasing responses, having better nutritional impacts on food baskets. Nonetheless, we still ignore what the [...] Read more.
The relative impacts on food purchases of many alternative front-of-pack nutritional labelling systems were tested, with various methods—from opinion pool to nationwide experiments. Clearly, some systems induce better purchasing responses, having better nutritional impacts on food baskets. Nonetheless, we still ignore what the ingredients of an efficient label are. Here, we propose guidance for label designers. To do so, we first propose a typology that breaks down established labelling systems into four elementary components: Directiveness, Scope and Gradation, Set of Reference and Sign. On this basis, we then build seven alternative generic labelling systems that we test in a framed-field experiment enabling us to measure the effect of each component on food purchases in isolation. Our results show that an effective front-of-pack labelling system should be Food-Directive (instead of Diet-Directive) and be displayed on both healthy and unhealthy food. The reference set, which is across categories or within categories, produces the same average nutrition score but generates contrasting behavioural responses. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nutrition and Food Labelling: The Impact of Established Front of Pack (FoP) Label Systems on Behaviour)
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16 pages, 2179 KiB  
Article
The Effect of Dynamic Food Labels with Real-Time Feedback on Diet Quality: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial
by Soye Shin, Rob M. van Dam and Eric A. Finkelstein
Nutrients 2020, 12(7), 2158; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12072158 - 20 Jul 2020
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 5221
Abstract
The rising prevalence of non-communicable diseases has brought attention to the importance of consuming a healthy diet. One strategy to improve diet quality is through front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition labels. Taking advantage of an online grocery store, we allowed consumers to choose the FOP [...] Read more.
The rising prevalence of non-communicable diseases has brought attention to the importance of consuming a healthy diet. One strategy to improve diet quality is through front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition labels. Taking advantage of an online grocery store, we allowed consumers to choose the FOP labels they preferred, and combined this information with real-time feedback on the overall nutritional quality of the shopping basket. We hypothesized that these dynamic food labels with real-time feedback (DFLF) would improve nutritional quality of food purchases. This trial followed a two-arm (no-label control and DFLF) crossover design with 125 participants exposed to each condition once in random order via an online grocery store. A first difference regression model allowed for estimating the unbiased effect of the DFLF on diet quality, measured by the weighted average Nutri-Score (ranging 1 to 5) per serving (primary) and changes in select nutrients and calories. The mean weighted Nutri-Score was 0.4 (12.6%) higher in the DFLF arm (CI: [0.2, 0.6]) relative to the control. The DFLF also decreased the amount of sugar per serving by 0.9 g (CI: [−1.7, −0.0]) and total sugar per shop by 169.5 g (CI: [−284.5, −54.5]). The DFLF features significantly improved nutrition quality relative to no labelling, as measured by average Nutri-Score values. These results shed light on the considerable potential of the online shopping environment to improve diet quality through customization and real time feedback. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nutrition and Food Labelling: The Impact of Established Front of Pack (FoP) Label Systems on Behaviour)
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34 pages, 1697 KiB  
Article
The Effect of Front-of-Pack Nutritional Labels and Back-of-Pack Tables on Dietary Quality
by Helene Normann Rønnow
Nutrients 2020, 12(6), 1704; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12061704 - 06 Jun 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4395
Abstract
A healthy diet is important to prevent lifestyle diseases. Food labels have been proposed as a policy tool to improve the healthiness of food choices, as they provide information about nutritional content and health attributes which may otherwise have been unknown to the [...] Read more.
A healthy diet is important to prevent lifestyle diseases. Food labels have been proposed as a policy tool to improve the healthiness of food choices, as they provide information about nutritional content and health attributes which may otherwise have been unknown to the consumer. This study investigates the effect of food labels with different formats on dietary quality by using home-scan panel data and difference-in-difference methods to compare the change in dietary quality over time for households that start to use food labels with households that do not use labels. I find that the use of front-of-pack (FOP) nutritional labels increases overall dietary quality, which is driven by reduced intake of added sugar and increased intake of fiber. The use of back-of-pack (BOP) nutritional tables does not influence dietary quality. There is no additional benefit to overall dietary quality by using both labels. However, the results indicate that there could be a benefit of using both labels on certain nutrients. The results imply that additional policies are needed to supplement food labels in order to improve dietary quality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nutrition and Food Labelling: The Impact of Established Front of Pack (FoP) Label Systems on Behaviour)
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15 pages, 2244 KiB  
Article
Using Sensory Cues to Optimise the Satiety Value of a Reduced-Calorie Product Labelled ‘Healthier Choice’
by Keri McCrickerd, Priscilla Pei Sian Tay, Claudia Shuning Tang and Ciarán Gerard Forde
Nutrients 2020, 12(1), 107; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12010107 - 30 Dec 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4526
Abstract
Reformulation strategies to reduce the energy density of commonly consumed foods and beverages are intended to support weight management, but expectations generated by labelling these as ‘healthier’ alternatives can have unintended effects on the product’s sensory evaluations and consumption behaviours. We compared the [...] Read more.
Reformulation strategies to reduce the energy density of commonly consumed foods and beverages are intended to support weight management, but expectations generated by labelling these as ‘healthier’ alternatives can have unintended effects on the product’s sensory evaluations and consumption behaviours. We compared the impact of four different strategies for presenting a lower-calorie beverage to consumers on product perceptions, short-term appetite and energy intake. Participants (N = 112) consumed higher- (211 kcal/portion) and lower-calorie (98 kcal/portion) fixed-portion soymilks in the morning across two test days, with the lower-calorie version presented in one of four contexts varying in label information and sensory quality: (1) sensory-matched/unlabelled, (2) sensory-matched/labelled, (3) sensory-reduced (less sweet and creamy)/labelled, and (4) sensory-enhanced (sweeter and creamier)/labelled. The label was Singapore’s Healthier Choice Symbol, which also highlighted that the soymilk was lower calorie. Changes in reported appetite, ad libitum lunch intake, and self-reported intake for the rest of the text day were recorded. Results indicated that total energy intake was consistently lower on the days the lower calorie beverages were consumed, regardless of how they were presented. However, the ‘healthier choice’ label increased hunger prior to lunch and reduced the soymilks’ perceived thickness and sweetness compared to the same unlabelled version. Increasing the product’s sensory intensity successfully maintained liking, experienced sensory quality and appetite. Results suggest that food companies wanting to explicitly label product reformulations could combine messages of ‘lower calorie’ and ‘healthier choice’ with appropriate taste and texture enhancements to maintain acceptance and avoid negative effects on appetite. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nutrition and Food Labelling: The Impact of Established Front of Pack (FoP) Label Systems on Behaviour)
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