Abstract
Since 2013, China has implemented a nutrition label regulation that aims to provide essential nutrition information through nutrition facts tables labeled on the back of food packages. Yet, the relationship between people’s nutrition knowledge and their nutrition label use remains less clear. This study adopted the structural equation modeling approach to analyze a nationally representative survey of 1500 Chinese individuals through the cognitive processing model, interrelated nutrition knowledge, attention to nutrition information on the nutrition facts table, comprehension of nutrition information, food choice and dietary intake. It was found that nutrition knowledge positively influenced attention to nutrition information; a better comprehension of nutrition information, which could benefit healthier food choices, did not relate to a higher level of attention to that information; dietary intake was affected significantly by nutrition knowledge, but it had little impact on food choice. The results signify that nutrition knowledge hardly supports nutrition facts table use among the Chinese people, mainly due to incomprehensible labeled information. Therefore, it emphasizes the need to enhance people’s comprehension through front-of-package labels and corresponding smartphone applications.
Highlights
A nutrition label, as an effective policy instrument for health promotion and the prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) [1], is expected to help consumers make informed food choices with information on the nutritional values of products [2]
The results showed a significant effect of nutrition knowledge on dietary intake, which was in accordance with previous studies of Ahmadi et al [11] and Breen et al [46], that dietary intake is directly impacted by nutrition knowledge
Through online survey data collected from 1500 people across China, this study provided deeper insights for examining the relationship between nutrition knowledge and nutrition facts table use with the cognitive processing model
Summary
A nutrition label, as an effective policy instrument for health promotion and the prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) [1], is expected to help consumers make informed food choices with information on the nutritional values of products [2]. A few studies found that nutrition label use may lead some consumers to improve their nutrition knowledge with respect to the perceived healthiness of products [13]. Some have argued that nutrition label use has no significant correlation with nutrition knowledge, as was seen with respondents in New Jersey [14] and rural youth in South Africa [15]. This disparity in results could be attributed to differences in methods (e.g., empirical investigation, systematic review), samples, type of nutrition label, etc. We employed an online survey in China and the model of cognitive processes to establish such linkages
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