Is nutrition labelling working?

Before we can assess whether or not nutrition labelling is effective we have to ascertain what we want from the labelling.

At a basic level nutrition labels are intended to guide the consumer in selecting food that promotes public health. The information provided should be truthful, not mislead the consumer and be consistent with dietary recommendations.

How do we measure if this is happening? Is it enough that the information on all food labels is accurate and understood by consumers? Well no. Surely to say nutrition labelling is effective we should see improvements in public health.

Questions that need addressing

• Do consumers make long-term healthier food choices as a result of having used nutrition information on food packaging?
• To what extent do nutrition labelling schemes have to be standardised to help consumers cultivate healthy eating habits? Research by FLABEL, EUFIC and the Surrey Food Consumer Behaviour and Health Research Centre in Europe and by the Australian Heart Foundation in Australia suggests that different labelling schemes can be equally effective in helping consumers identify healthy options, yet many groups assert that standardised nutrition labels are imperative.
• Is nutrition labelling beyond packaged foods useful? The menu labelling debate has moved beyond the United States to Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and Asia. Menu labelling research has proliferated in recent years but is limited chiefly to Europe, North America and Australia.
• How can new technologies best be used to encourage healthy food choices? Research shows that online shopping is here to stay but consumers are less likely to check nutrition information online than in-store.

Overview of the global state of play for nutrition labelling

The European Food Information Council (EUFIC), in collaboration with Landmark Europe and input from several nutrition organisations across the world, has just released the 2018 edition of the ‘Global Update on Nutrition Labeling’. This report provides a comprehensive overview of the state of play on nutrition labelling today.

The report looks into:

• What are the major nutrition labelling initiatives adopted or in the pipeline to date?
• How do they work and what do the various stakeholders say?
• Where is the debate heading?
• What does the research show?

The key takeaways from the 2018 edition are the following:

• A global proliferation of nutrition labelling initiatives, both public and private, is underway. While labels using stars and positive logos are popular in the Asia–Pacific region, South American countries are increasingly opting for health warnings. Positive logos continue to be favoured in Asia, Africa and North and Eastern Europe, while traffic lights are gaining ground in western Europe.
• Policy decisions should be based on science: the key question is how appropriate and meaningful nutrition information can be provided on the food label so that motivated consumers can act on their desire to improve their diets. There is great interest among stakeholders and the research community in the potential of nutrition labelling to guide consumers in their product choices so as to enable them to adopt more balanced eating habits. In this respect, it is clear that what matters is the overall diet, not the consumption of an individual product.
• The EU’s adoption of a harmonised format for FOP labels and national-level schemes in the UK and France have made it clear that government backing is needed to support a scheme’s credibility, while at the same time raising the question of how such schemes might impact international trade.
• Nutrition labelling policy should take into account consumer use, interpretation and understanding of different nutrition labelling schemes, but ultimately it is the impact on purchasing decisions and overall diets that matters. The consumer research section of this report showed that these factors vary from country to country and between consumer segments. Most research on FOP formats has been conducted in Europe, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. Given the potential for variance, studies in other regions are needed to understand better local consumer attitudes.
• Nutrition labelling debates are often informed more by value judgements of what consumers like than research on what is effective in influencing consumer choices. Some studies show that judgement of nutritional quality labels, GDA-based labels and health logos have a sizeable impact on consumers’ preference and intention to purchase a product. This data is backed by consumer studies in Europe and Australia which confirm that different labelling systems can be equally effective in helping consumers identify healthier options, although other studies show no short-term effect on purchasing decisions.

The full report is available on the EUFIC website.

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