A review to inform understanding of the use of food safety messages on food labels

Abstract

Food labels are central for communicating information about food products to consumers, and thus are important for imparting food safety messages, particularly as a high proportion of food‐borne illnesses are caused by poor domestic food handling practices. This paper reviews studies investigating consumers' responses to labels, emphasizing findings related to food safety messages. The evidence is contradictory but consumers do use labels. However, as labels contain so much diverse information it can be difficult for consumers to identify the important food safety messages. There is some confusion over terms relating to spoilation dates, and information such as cooking guidelines that are generally ignored. Like many behaviours, use of labels is influenced by a wide range of factors including attitudes, knowledge, experience, socio‐demographic characteristics, trust in message providers and label design. Recommendations are for more research into the use of food safety information on labels, observational studies to inform understanding of this issue and clarification for consumers about what information is important to food safety.

Development of functional food with the participation of the consumer. Motivators for consumption of functional products

“…The results of surveys confirm the importance of the declaration on the healthful properties of a product in obtaining the acceptance of functional products (Leathwood et al ., ; Williams and Ghosh, ; Williams et al ., ; Pothoulaki and Chryssochoidis, ; Verbeke et al ., ). What is more, the research indicates that consumers attach great importance to the information on the label, such as expiry date, healthful properties and nutritional values (Krystallis et al ., ; Hall and Osses, ).…”

Food Consumer Information Behavior: Need Arousal, Seeking Behavior, and Information Use

“…For instance, Pieniak, Vanhonacker and Verbeke (2013), investigating the information behavior of fish consumers, found that food labels and employees of food retail stores are frequently used sources. Other studies also confirm that consumers often use food labels-for example, to seek nutrition information (Grunert & Wills, 2007)-despite the fact that, as Wills, Schmidt, Pillo-Blocka, and Cairns (2009) note, nutrition labels are not always effective, especially when they contain a vast amount of diverse information (Hall & Osses, 2013). In general, the effectiveness of nutritional labels is heavily influenced by their format and wording (Hieke & Taylor, 2012); hence, an "inappropriate" form and/or wording can discourage the use of labels as information sources.…”

Why do not you read the label? – an integrated framework of consumer label information search

“…Many of these studies have focused on exploring the determinants of LIS (Drichoutis et al ., ), whereas few studies have created frameworks to explain LIS as part of the decision‐making process [e.g. see (Moorman, ; Szykman et al ., ; Drichoutis et al ., ; Drichoutis et al ., ; Grunert and Wills, ; Hall and Osses, )]. This study contributes to filling this gap.…”

“…nutrition labels, environmental labels, warning labels, health claims and so forth. (Juhl and Poulsen, 2000;Baltas, 2001;Cheftel, 2005;Van Trijp and Van der Lans, 2007;Grunert et al, 2010;Hall and Osses, 2013;Beruchashvili et al, 2014). Consequently, food labelling and consumers' label information search (LIS) have emerged as important aspects of the consumer behaviour literature (Drichoutis et al, 2006).…”