Helpfulness of Nutritional Value Labels in Choosing Low-Fat Products

Abstract

In the Netherlands, major discrepancies have been found between the guidelines for a prudent diet from the Nether- lands Nutrition Council and actual dietary behavior as mea- sured through food consumption research.'+ The Nether- lands Nutrition Council has given the advice that healthy diet promotion activities should be developed that focus on a reduction of total fat intake, especially of saturated fat, because the largest public health gain is expected from such a red~ction.',~The Dutch guidelines recommend reducing fat intake to 30% to 35% of total calories.'~~ Currently, dietary fat intake is as high as 37% of total energy intake.4 Several Dutch healthy diet promotion activities have been developed - for example, the Dutch Heart Foundation's guided supermarket tour program5-to increase the use of nutritional value labels on packages of food products, assuming that these labels are helpful for consumers in choosing low-fat products. Previous studies indicated that Dutch consumers are aware of the nutritional value labels and have positive attitudes towards the provision of labels, but make little use of them in gene~-al.~.~ Furthermore, some studies concluded that consumers cannot interpret accurately nutritional value label^.^-^ Studies in other countries showed similar result^.^.'^ No information is available on whether consumers are able to apply the nutri- tional value information to reduce their fat intake. In this article, the results of an exploratory study into the use of nutritional value labels with respect to choosing low- fat food products are presented. In a field experiment in a supermarket, it was investigated whether women who are responsible for the daily shopping for food products were able to choose products lower in fat than the products they usu- ally buy, using the information on food packages, including the information provided by nutritional value labels. More- over, the study examined which information on packages was used, and which information items on nutritional value