Consumers’ Responses to Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labelling: Results from a Sample from The Netherlands

Front-of-pack labels (FoPLs) are efficient tools for helping consumers identify healthier food products. Although discussions on nutritional labelling are currently ongoing in Europe, few studies have compared the effectiveness of FoPLs in European countries, including the Netherlands. This study aimed to compare five FoPLs among Dutch participants (the Health Star Rating (HSR) system, Multiple Traffic Lights (MTL), Nutri-Score, Reference Intakes (RIs), and Warning symbols) in terms of perception and understanding of the labels and food choices. In 2019, 1032 Dutch consumers were recruited and... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Manon Egnell
Zenobia Talati
Marion Gombaud
Pilar Galan
Serge Hercberg
Simone Pettigrew
Chantal Julia
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
Reihe/Periodikum: Nutrients, Vol 11, Iss 8, p 1817 (2019)
Verlag/Hrsg.: MDPI AG
Schlagwörter: nutritional labelling / food choices / comprehension / perception / Dutch consumers / food policies / Nutrition. Foods and food supply / TX341-641
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27021076
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11081817

Front-of-pack labels (FoPLs) are efficient tools for helping consumers identify healthier food products. Although discussions on nutritional labelling are currently ongoing in Europe, few studies have compared the effectiveness of FoPLs in European countries, including the Netherlands. This study aimed to compare five FoPLs among Dutch participants (the Health Star Rating (HSR) system, Multiple Traffic Lights (MTL), Nutri-Score, Reference Intakes (RIs), and Warning symbols) in terms of perception and understanding of the labels and food choices. In 2019, 1032 Dutch consumers were recruited and asked to select one product from among a set of three foods with different nutritional profiles, and then rank the products within the sets according to their nutritional quality. These tasks were performed with no label and then with one of the five FoPLs on the package, depending on the randomization arm. Finally, participants were questioned on their perceptions regarding the label to which they were exposed. Regarding perceptions, all FoPLs were favorably perceived but with only marginal differences between FoPLs. While no significant difference across labels was observed for food choices, the Nutri-Score demonstrated the highest overall performance in helping consumers rank the products according to their nutritional quality.