Food Label Use, Self‐Selectivity, and Diet Quality

Abstract

Food labels provide measurable benefits by improving diet quality of Americans by as much as four to six points on a 100‐point Healthy Eating Index scale. Among nutritional panels, serving sizes, nutrient content claims, list of ingredients, and health claims, the use of health claims on food labels provides the highest level of improvement in diet quality. The data source for this analysis is the 1994 to 1996 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes for Individuals (CSFII) and the accompanying Diet and Health Knowledge Survey (DHKS).

A theoretical and empirical investigation of nutritional label use

“…The finding on males has been verified by several studies [3,4,6,15], and once more confirms that men are less interested in nutrition, perhaps because they are less likely to agree that nutritional labels are useful [45]. The latter result regarding age can be associated with the lower processing capacity of older people, and the fact that older people tend to perceive labels to be less understandable [8].…”

“…For example, Drichoutis et al [3], Guthrie et al [4], Kim et al [5,6] and Nayga [2,7] empirically investigated the factors that affect nutritional food label use.…”

“…For example, there has been no consensus on the effect of age or income on nutritional label use (e.g., [3,6,[8][9][10][11][12]). For other factors, the literature points to a onedirection relationship.…”

“…For other factors, the literature points to a onedirection relationship. For example, education has been found to positively affect label use and females have been found more likely to use nutritional labels than males [2][3][4][5][6][12][13][14][15]. Household size has also been found to have an effect on label use.…”

Australian consumers are sceptical about but influenced by claims about fat on food labels

“…Label use is significantly associated with lower fat consumption and higher intakes of fruits and vegetables (Neuhouser et al, 1999) as well as better diet quality overall (Perez-Escamilla & Haldeman, 2002;Kreuter et al, 1997). Consumers who hold a strong belief that what is consumed can help reduce the risk of disease are more likely to use nutritional information related to fat on foods (Nayga, 1996;Smith et al, 2000;Kim et al, 2001). Men, younger consumers and those with lower levels of education are less likely to use food labels (Nayga, 1996(Nayga, , 2000Smith et al, 2000;Kim et al, 2001).…”