A review of nutrition labeling and food choice in the United States

Abstract

SummaryA proliferation of processed food and labeling claims motivated the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990, which mandated the Nutrition Facts Label. Providing nutrition information is often put forth as a way to change food choice; however, despite efforts to provide dietary information using nutrition labeling, more than a third of the US has obesity and portions of the population continue to under consume vital nutrients. There has been progress beyond the Nutrition Facts Label in recent years with front‐of‐package labeling and menu labeling, which is crucial given changes in consumption trends for food‐away‐from‐home. Additionally, changes were recently made to the Nutrition Facts Label due to lack of awareness, understanding, and ability to effectively improve diet quality. This paper explores the literature to track the evolution of knowledge about attention to nutrition information and how nutrition information affects dietary choices.

Rapid literature review on the impact of health messaging and product information on alcohol labelling

“…The review found evidence in support of colour-coded schemes, such as traffic light systems, in helping people to estimate alcohol serving limits (Blackwell et al, 2018). This resonates with the strong empirical support of the effectiveness of colour-coded schemes in relation to foods high in fat, sugar and/or salt (Cecchini & Warin, 2016;Dumoitier et al, 2019;Hawley et al, 2013;White & Signal, 2012).…”

How Is Functional Food Advertising Understood? An Approximation in University Students

“…Information that is presented in an understandable way is useful to make informed and correct purchases. In this sense, it is necessary to promote public health policies that encourage education and knowledge by developing skills allowing to efficiently understand nutritional and/or health information on these types of food [22,30,33,35,39,49,61,82]. In this way, average consumers (the figure of reference in regulations) will become highly informed empowered consumers [33].…”

“…A review of the literature highlights how studies on consumers' understanding of health claims largely focus on that of food packaging and labelling. The current research agenda is marked by research on the layout and location of information on the FOP (Front of Package) and its understanding by the consumer, the well-known "label effect" [40,41], narrowed to different geographical areas such as Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, France, United Kingdom and the Netherlands in Europe [42][43][44][45][46], Brazil and Mexico in Latin America [47,48], or the United States [49][50][51]; Australia and New Zealand [52,53].…”

“…The most decisive findings include perceptions of lack of information and the perceived need for information to be easy to understand thanks to the use of symbols, plain text or colours [22,23,49]. It has also been found that the use of labels improves consumer understanding of health claims [54]; leading to a more informed purchase [55].…”

Detection of Pork in Canned Meat Products by using DNA-based Methods

“…Meat products are considered a favorite item in a lot of countries and due to the consumption of meat products continues to elevate, mislabeling and adulteration of meat products have become common 2 . Consumers usually rely on food labeling to make right choices for religious and public health reasons 3 . The success this kind of adulteration in processed meat is invisible changes in the appearance, color, texture, and flavor of the processed meats.…”