Author: Constanza Avalos // Editor: Erin Pallott
Food labels are a ubiquitous feature in contemporary food retailing, and as such, they are a common sight for most people. However, some of us may deliberately avoid engaging with food labels, whereas others may struggle to fully comprehend their contents, or may experience both barriers to their effective utilisation.
But why are food labels everywhere? Policymakers have paid much attention to nutrition labels, called front-of-pack (FOP) labels, because they appear to be an effective way to encourage consumers to make healthier choices at a time when obesity rates are at record highs around the world.
In essence, FOPs guide consumers by providing them with concise and simplified information on food nutrients, as the current nutritional information on the back of food packages is very confusing. FOPs summarise nutrition information with rating symbols, colour coding or percentages to make it more accessible to consumers. For example, the UK traffic light labels use the colours green, yellow, and red to indicate the healthiness of food. These colours can evoke feelings of guilt and fear, which are strong drivers of consumer behaviour. A recent study on food packaging colouring demonstrated this, where individuals felt guiltier when consuming red-packaged unhealthy food than when consuming the same unhealthy food that is green-packaged, leading them to make alternative, healthier choices.
Even if we have all the nutritional information on labels, can we interpret them correctly? I don’t think so. Basically, we misinterpret labels because we do not have the capacity to handle all the information provided by the food label with the little time we have daily. Therefore, we do not make the best decisions based on labels, but the ones we can with the resources we have.
There is a large literature that has explored how consumers make non-rational decisions. Kahneman has led this literature with research indicating that people can make “trial and error” decisions. For example, everyone has had the experience of buying something without giving it much thought. Maybe you wanted to buy cereal last week, but there were too many choices, you felt overwhelmed and ended up buying the funniest package. Or maybe you wanted to cook a fancy dinner for your family, but didn’t have time to organise it, so you ended up buying the top-reviewed convenience food on UberEATS. These are clear indications that we are not consumers who select the information we find useful from products, but the one that satisfies our desires, even if these products do not represent the healthier decision that maximises our well-being.
How do we overcome these limitations to help consumers better interpret the labels? The behavioural economics research community explains that people’s decisions are limited by their cognitive capacity and the amount of information available to them. Consumers are overwhelmed by the amount of information and cannot apply reasoning to every small everyday decision, and innate responses are essential to save time and energy to reduce the complexity of our surrounding world. Hence, policymakers must be mindful to design a label with enough detail to be substantive and accessible to consumers if we want them to make healthier choices.
Now, how much information should a label have to be interpreted correctly and translated into healthier choices? Today there is no clear idea of how to find that balance. What we do know is that there are different labelling systems around the world and that they all display nutritional information in different ways. For example, there are binary labels, such as those in Chile and the Nordic countries, that only focus on which products are high in nutrients. On the other hand, Nutri-Score is one of the most popular labelling systems in Europe. This is a more detailed system that classifies foods from the letters A to F according to their degree of health. The United Kingdom uses traffic lights which are green, yellow, and red depending on the amount of specific nutrients, allowing the consumer to quickly decide which product to choose. A final approach is the Health Star Rating used in Australia and New Zealand. Ratings scale in half-star increments, from half a star to five stars; the higher the rating, the healthier the product.
Personally, I think I’m confused about whether binary or detailed designs result in healthier options. A scoping review mentioned that the higher visibility of binary labels can be explained because people are generally more attentive to negative information. Because binary messages only focus on what not to eat, they can provide a clearer picture of what consumers stand to lose by eating unhealthy foods compared to other systems that aim to communicate information about both healthy and unhealthy foods. So perhaps binary labels are better at helping consumers make binary distinctions, rather than helping them classify products based on their overall healthiness. But, on the other hand, in an experiment conducted by Silvio Ravaioli at Columbia University, where participants were asked to choose cereals in different choice tasks, those in the detailed label treatment group ended up choosing products with a higher average calorie than the group reading less detailed labels. Therefore, too much information could lead to unhealthy choices.
So, do we accurately interpret food labels? No, but I think that if we are aware of our limitations maybe we can interpret them better. On the other hand, more research is needed to understand what level of detail is sufficient for a label to be interpreted optimally and to be transformed into healthy choices.
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