Consumer has designs on nutrition labels
that consumers agree that it is important to have nutrition
information on food products, but as many as one in four can not
find the information from current labels.
Calls for clearer labelling as new survey from UK food agency finds that consumers agree that it is important to have nutrition information on food products, but as many as one in four can not find the information from current labels.
An ongoing debate between food manufacturers and consumer organisations, this new research set out to test food labels, and essentially, the effectiveness and appeal of various new nutrition label designs. The research followed on from earlier agency consumer research that identified three label designs that were most appealing to consumers.
The three new labels were tested alongside the current nutrition label and a label based on those used in the US. Consumers carried out various tests to determine the effectiveness of each label and were asked which one they preferred. The aim being to discover which label design best enabled consumers to extract key nutrition information in real-life situations.
Researchers found that while all the labels had their pros and cons, a nutrition label that marked key nutrients as 'high', 'medium' or 'low' came out on top in all-round performance and preference.
The current nutrition label performed well when consumers were asked to look at a single product and extract information on the calories, fat and saturated fat, and when they were asked to compare products in term of nutrient content per serving.
According to the survey results, consumers found it difficult to glean important information about the salt content from the current nutrition label, which includes information on the amount of sodium but not salt. Use of salt by food processors is heavily criticised by consumer groups, and this latest finding from the UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) will clearly feed their criticisms.
Consumers preferred nutrition labels that related nutrition to the diet, whether by figures (providing guideline daily amounts for key nutrients) or by words (marking key nutrients as 'high', 'medium' or 'low').
In January 2003, the European Commission began a review of the European legislation controlling the nutrition labelling of foods. The FSA said this week that the findings of its nutrition survey have been passed on to the European Commission to 'inform its work on the nutrition labelling review'.
