Modulação da resposta emocional evocada pela visualização de alimentos ultraprocessados doces e salgados através das cores do semáforo nutricional: implicações para os sistemas de rotulagem frontal

Abstract

Ultra-processed foods have been linked to obesity and other non-communicable chronic diseases as they are high in sugar, fats, sodium and have chemical additives. Front-of-pack nutrition labeling systems are recommended by public health sectors as a strategy to prevent these diseases, with nutritional traffic light being an example. It indicates the amounts of key nutrients (sugar, fats and salt) and the high, medium or low risk of developing diseases through the color codes red, amber and green, respectively. However, it is possible that the use of colors in front-of-pack labels may affect the appetitive emotional responses evoked by ultra-processed foods, without consumer awareness. Colors influence taste perception through cross-modal associations between vision and taste. For instance, the color red promotes an increase in sweetness perception, which may also implicitly enhance the appetitive emotional response evoked by sweet foods. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate whether color codes from the traffic-light system would modulate the emotional reactivity evoked by sweet and salty ultra-processed products` images. In both experiments, the colors were previously associated with risks in developing chronic diseases (green = low risk; amber = medium risk; red = high risk). In experiment I (n= 78; 65 women), a psychometric scale (Self-Assessment Manikin, SAM) was applied to evaluate the emotional responses related to the ultra-processed food images when paired with each color ofthe traffic-light system. In experiment II (n= 24, 18 women), the participants' electrocortical activities were recorded to assess the early posterior negativity, a cerebral index of emotional responses. In both experiments, only the red color promoted an unintended increase of the appetitive emotional responses evoked by sweet products (versus salty products), possibly through implicit cross-modal associations in sweet products. The green color may confound the consumer, since unhealthy products were classified as healthier when paired with green. Designers, researchers, and policy makers may consider colortaste cross-modal associations when designing, testing, and applying front-of-pack labels.