Abstract
In the ongoing debate about front-of-package (FOP) nutrition labels, little data exist regarding nutritionally at-risk populations, although they are critical targets of prevention programs. This study aimed to compare the impact of FOP labels on the ability to rank products according to their nutritional quality among French adults potentially at risk of poor dietary quality (N = 14,230). Four labels were evaluated: Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA), Multiple Traffic Lights (MTL), 5-Color Nutrition Label (5-CNL), Green Tick (Tick), along with a reference without label. Mixed models were used to assess how individual characteristics and FOP labels were associated with the ability to rank products. Older participants and those with a lower educational level, income, nutritional knowledge, and likelihood of reading nutrition facts were less skilled at ranking food products according to nutritional quality. Compared with individual characteristics, nutrition labels had an increased impact on food product ranking ability. Overall, 5-CNL corresponded to the highest rate of correct responses, followed by MTL, GDA, and Tick (p < 0.0001). The strongest impact of 5-CNL was observed among individuals with no nutritional knowledge (odds ratio (OR): 20.24; 95% confidence interval (CI): 13.19–31.06). Therefore, 5-CNL appeared to be effective at informing consumers, including those who are nutritionally at-risk, about the nutritional quality of food products.
Highlights
In the current fight against chronic diseases, promoting a healthy diet is a major objective of public health policies around the world [1]
Consistent with previous work, results of the present study indicate that nutrition labels are efficient tools for increasing consumers’ ability to compare nutritional quality across food products, compared with a reference situation presenting no label [7,17,18,25,27,43]
As regards the nutrient-specific label formats, and in agreement with previous research, results of the present study showed that the Multiple Traffic Lights (MTL) was better than the Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) at increasing understanding [17,18,19,25,26]
Summary
In the current fight against chronic diseases, promoting a healthy diet is a major objective of public health policies around the world [1]. Efforts should be made to provide simple and comprehensible information in order to enable consumers to make informed choices. For this reason, front-of-package (FOP) nutrition labeling is of major interest, since it increases consumer awareness of the nutritional quality of food [3,4,5,6,7,8]. Nutrient-specific labels display the amount of nutrients for which individual intake should be limited (e.g., fat, sodium). Examples of such labels include the Multiple Traffic Lights (MTL)
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