Are Food Labels Effective as a Means of Health Prevention?

Abstract

Chronic diseases related to unbalanced and unhealthy eating habits have definitely become one of the major issues of modern age, not only in western countries but also in those ones where rapid economic growth has increased global prosperity levels. In order to avoid medical systems to collapse under excessive costs, International and Public Organizations strongly support health policies that aim to make people shift towards wholesome dietary patterns, also encouraging the use of food-labels to choose healthier products. To evaluate the consumers’ knowledge and perception about food-labels a brief questionnaire was developed and shared on Facebook between January-March 2016. Most of the participants were young adults with higher education. They declared to do their shopping at least once a week, reading the food-labels quite often. Despite owing limited knowledge in basic nutrition principles and food-labelling they were generally able to recognize healthier products looking over their nutritional fact tables. Anyway, on average, what they care the most about the products they purchase is the global quality level rather than the nutritional values. In order to induce the whole population to use food label as an effective self-protection tool, more efforts should be done to improve their knowledge on nutrition fundamentals and basics about food labelling, because that would make them able to take safer and more conscious choices as regards their own health.Significance for public healthFood label represents the identity card of food products: it reports composition, ingredients and their relative amounts, it informs about quality, origin, processing and preservation. This information gives the consumer the opportunity to consciously choose what to purchase. The label could concretely help us in protecting and improving our health, if our choices are supported by some basic knowledge of wholesome nutrition, based on a balanced and varied diet. In a wider perspective, this may translate into a reduction of obesity and chronic disease incidence – closely related to negative eating habits – and significantly impact on public health in terms of costs for individuals and medical systems. The study proposed highlights how, despite the reported nutritional information is often clear and comprehensive, consumers do not necessarily take the healthiest choice, but decisionmaking process is also influenced by the ability to decode the label and its graphical representation, by socio-economic status and self-perception of psychophysical well-being. Food security and related issues won’t be debated in the following paper, but it is worth reminding that the label is also a key element to guarantee consumers safety. Providing the product’s lot number, it is essential for tracing the product itself and to quickly recall it from the market in case of food alert.

Relationship between awareness and use of nutrition labels and obesity

“…If food labels can greatly influence the public health, its rates of use should be increased among Koreans. A previous study suggested that food labels can effectively be used as a means of health prevention and the awareness of food label usefulness among all consumers should be raised [15]. A systematic review and meta-analysis findings suggested that nutrition labelling may be an effective approach to empowering consumers in choosing healthier products [16].…”

“…Therefore, the prevention and management strategy of obesity should be to reinforce consumers' perception and use of nutrition labeling of foods [8]. Previous studies have investigated the predictors, strategies, impacts, and effectiveness on nutrition label use [7,8,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Studies on the factors associating nutrition labeling and obesity are limited.…”

Labeling of Cannabidiol Products: A Public Health Perspective

“…FDA-regulated product labels are considered an important tool for protecting consumers and enabling informed decision-making. 11 Widespread mislabeling of hemp and Cannabis products has been documented by both independent researchers and the FDA and other organizations. 12,13 Underlabeling and overlabeling of both CBD and THC content have been reported.…”

Managing the Humic Acid Fertilizing of Chickpea and Protein Status

“…Nutrition means a behavior for the purposes that; protection of health, growing and development, increasing of life quality and required for the body using sufficient levels of nutritional components by accurate timing and consciously (Viola et al, 2016). Human being provides the nutritional needs of animal and plant based food sources.…”