A consumer perspective on the growing role of front-of-pack nutrition labelling



Wasa crackers with 'Ik Kies Bewust' (IKB)  logo



The future of front-of-pack nutrition labelling is still heavily debated. These small-sized nutrition logos aim to make your healthy food choice more intuitive and simple. Examples include the Choices logo, Guiding Stars system, Traffic Light systems and Guidelines Daily Amounts (GDA) systems. 

Recently, a paper written by Hans Dagevos and myself was accepted for publication in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition (click here for full-text preprint paper). The paper is inspired by our Dutch book 'Gezondheidslogo's op eten' we edited almost three years ago. We felt that although a lot of attention is devoted to the nutritional foundation of profile systems (e.g. which criteria to use), less attention is given to the consumer perspective in the development of these logos. More insight is needed in the psychological issues surrounding the current debates. For example, various misinterpretations may occur with nutrition labels (see table 2 in paper). One concern is that nutrition information on packages makes consumers vulnerable to halo effects. So, if it looks healthy, you can eat more.

Proponents believe that these logos promote healthier choices and stimulate innovation of the food industry. Unfortunately, little empirical evidence exist showing that these labels will actually lead to healthier food choices and less nutrition-related diseases. Opponents even warn that logos may confuse and mislead consumers. Particularly positive framed nutrition labels may act as a kind of 'good for you' messages.  

Let's end with some fresh good news from the front-of-pack nutrition logos field! A few days ago, Marion Nestle blogged about a recent study showing the positive effects of traffic light labels in a cafeteria setting. This intervention study, published in the American Journal of Public Health found that traffic light labels led to decreases in sales of red-labeled items and increases in sales of those with green labels. Results were most striking for beverage sales. Overall, this shows that front-of-pack logos can play a vital role as part of a broader basket of interventions that encourage consumers to improve their eating habits.

My Top 3 of free apps that support you in sticking to your goals

We all know that it is very hard to stick to your goals. Here you find my Top 3 of free apps that help you stick to your New Year's resolutions.

1) The Eatery: Build on the honest real-time feedback of friends and strangers

My favorite one! Self-monitoring improves self-awareness of behaviour ('Am I really eating that much chocolate?'), but writing down everything you eat can also be quite boring and time-consuming. The Eatery promotes its free app with the slogan 'stop counting calories, start eating better'.

The idea is that you take a picture of everything that you plan to eat. Then you invite your friends to comment on the meals you are about to eat or just finished. Within a few minutes you will then receive a rating on a scale of 1 (very unhealthy) till 100 (extremely healthy). As you can see, my homemade oliebollen (Dutch treat) were not considered to be very healthy. I did not connect to Facebook, but still I received about 20 ratings per snapped food. So, by using crowdsourcing, other people evaluate the healthiness of your eating habits. 

This app is addictive and fun to do! However, I do not always agree with the crowd's healthiness ratings. I noticed that the crowd is also susceptible to biases such as health halos and the negative calorie illusion. Just put a salad next to your burger or state that it is fat-free, and the ratings go up substantially. And although you can indicate the portion size consumed, I have the impression that you do not include that information in your ratings of other people's food. But the idea is great and offers opportunities for interesting consumer studies.

2) Stickk: Make yourself accountable; pay when you do not reach your goals

Stickk is not an app, but a site that claims that your chances of success are higher when you put actual money on your goal. It is not obligatory, but you have the option to commit money to your goal and if you do not achieve it, Stickk will send the money to the person, charity or organisation that you indicated. The site is founded by Yale economists and based on two key principles of behavioural economics: (1) people do not always follow up what they intend to do and (2) incentives motivate people to do things. I did not commit money to my goal, so I guess that is the reason that it was not that motivating. I think I am going to commit myself again, but then with serious money....

3) My Weight App and MyNetDairy: track your weight loss progress
A recent study of Barbara Cunningham showed that people do not lose more weight when they track their diet using smart phones compared to the traditional pen and paper method. But still, if you have a smartphone, it is convenient to try an app.

These apps help you to track you weight day by day (My Weight App) and calories/exercise (MyNetDiary). I used the free versions, and they are easy to use. The progress bar of the My Weight app gives a view on how far you progressed with your weight loss.

Netherlands Nutrition Centre goes viral with ecological foot print guru

Yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised by a personalized video message of the Voeroe, a guru that knows everything about your ecological foot print. At the website of the Nutrition Centre you can calculate your own food print. At Twitter, you can ask a question to the guru and if you are lucky, he will answer you personally.

I think this is a very innovative way to involve consumers beyond the traditional website. When done in the right way, they help organizations to really connect with consumers and get the message across. It is not easy, however, to create a successful campaign. In 2010, Old Spice developed a social media campaign in which 'The Old Spice Guy' responded to questions posed by fans, celebrities and bloggers in more than 180 personalized videos. This campaign was extremely successful (25 million views!) and inspired many other companies to use viral marketing to promote their products.

Tippex campaign: tell the hunter what to do

Since then, a lot has been learned on how to best create these virals. Basically, they should provide unique, funny and high quality content, otherwise people will not share it. And social media is all about sharing.


My all-time favourite is the Tippex Bear; it is really interactive, hilarious and entertaining! Try it yourself and you will not be bored the coming fifteen minutes.





Six principles of a good Choice Architect - inspiration for nudging consumers towards healthier food choices

Nudging is hot, as I described in an earlier blog post. Nudges are simple, low-cost interventions to move consumers towards healthier choices without banning (food) products or telling them how to live.

A freely available paper of Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein and John Balz sketches the six principles of good choice architecture. A choice architect has the responsibility for organizing the context in which people make decisions.

The principles in the paper form the acronym NUDGES:

• iNcentives - make consumers aware of the incentives they face. For example, make the costs saved of certain things salient, such as the cost per hour of lowering the temperature a few degrees or the calories burned by doing certain activities.
• Understanding mappings - help consumers to improve their ability to map and hence select options that will make them better off. For example, make information more comprehensible and transparent (which is absolutely not the case with costs of mobile phone use or credit cards).
• Defaults - a large number of people end up with the default option, the choice that you will get if you do nothing. Changing the defaults regarding the way food is served and presented could also change consumer choices for the better.
• Give feedback - provide feedback on the performance of people (clever feedback systems).
• Expect error - leaving the gas tank cap or bank card behind when done are examples of such predictable errors. This is called the 'postcompletion error'. As consumers make mistakes, a well designed choice architecture assumes that people make mistakes and takes this into account.
• Structure complex choices - consumers are likely to go for a simple choice strategy when decisions are complex. So, the more complex a decision is, the more choice archictecs have to do their best to structure and organize the options.




Nudging study: changed default snack assortment



These principles are an inspiration for empirical research into nudging consumers toward healthier food choices. At the staff canteen of a Dutch hospital, we recently changed the default assortiment of snacks (both healthy and unhealthy snacks) and measured how much we sold. Student Kai Otten will soon reveal the results of this interesting field study. Keep an eye on this blog.

More student nudging projects can be found at the page of this blog called 'Student thesis info: do consumer research yourself'.