A study published in Public Health Nutrition shows that consumers may be more likely to buy foods that have front-of-pack nutrition labels regardless of their healthfulness. The researchers set out to quantify the impact of two dominant front-of-pack (FOP) nutritional label formats—the traffic light label and the Percentage Daily Intake—on consumer evaluations of food products that carried them.
The researchers conducted the experiment at the University of Otago, New Zealand, with 250 university students selected at random and who met qualifying criteria of independent living and regular purchase of the products used in the research. They were not aware of the purpose of the research and the experiment was set up to allow the impact of the FOP labels to be isolated from the effects of the product and the participants.
The researchers found that the presence of FOP labels led to significant and positive changes in consumer purchase intentions towards the products that carried them. In fact, their purchasing intentions were not affected by the nature of FOP labels used, their size, or the product nutritional status.
The researchers concluded that the presence of FOP labels on foods led to the participants using the FOP labels a cue to the products’ desirability. “As such, it represents a complete functional failure of both of these FOP label types in this specific instance,” wrote the researchers. “This result supports calls for further research on the performance of these FOP labels before any move to compulsory deployment is made.”
