‘How many calories did I just eat?’ An experimental study examining the effect of changes to serving size information on nutrition labels

Abstract

Labelling foods with nutrition information using a serving size reference amount for the entire container increased understanding of energy content. Consumers prefer nutrition labels that include more prominently featured serving size information. Additional modifications that further improve consumers' accuracy should be examined. These results have direct implications for nutrition labelling policy.

Piloting Citizen Science Methods to Measure Perceptions of Carbon Footprint and Energy Content of Food

“…Evidence based dietary guidelines, advice, and policy encourages people toward sustainable and healthy diets (Kause et al, 2009; Health Council of the Netherlands, 2011; Ministers NC, 2014;Reynolds et al, 2014;Monteiro et al, 2015;Fischer and Garnett, 2016;Freidberg, 2016;van't Veer et al, 2017;Poore and Nemecek, 2018;CCC, 2020). However, recent research suggests there is a food-knowledge disconnect between the food research community, and the general public, with the citizens typically underestimating the carbon footprint, misestimating portion sizes, and energy content of foods (Rolls et al, 2002;Choi and Pak, 2006;Carels et al, 2007;Steenhuis and Vermeer, 2009;Chernev and Chandon, 2010;Miyazaki et al, 2011;Lee et al, 2012;Holmstrup et al, 2013;Cohen and Story, 2014;Liu et al, 2015;Jones et al, 2016;Panzone et al, 2016, in press;Hartmann and Siegrist, 2017;Edelson et al, 2018;Shi et al, 2018;Camilleri et al, 2019;Kemper et al, 2019;Thomas and Kyung, 2019). The public are motivated to reduce the environmental impact of their diet with two thirds of surveyed EU consumers being open to changes in diet and 40% having already reduced or stopped red meat consumption.…”

Consumer Understanding, Perception and Interpretation of Serving Size Information on Food Labels: A Scoping Review

“…The 14 papers reporting findings from 29 studies (nested experiments) were published between 2012 and 2019. Studies took place in four different countries, including ten from the USA [33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41], two from Canada [42,43], one from Australia [44], and one from the United Kingdom [45]. Sample sizes across these studies ranged from n = 51 [39] to n = 16,048 [40], including nine studies with less than 1000 participants and four studies reporting results from 1000+ participants.…”

“…The average participant age per sample ranged from 18.0 years [34,44,46] to 75.0 years [34]. Measures of body mass index (BMI) or weight status were provided for six of the samples, which ranged from 21.5 to 28.5 [33,36,41,42,43,44]. For the remaining eight samples, no weight status was reported.…”

“…A non-randomized experimental design was used in three studies, none of which had a control group [33,35,37]. An experimental survey design (random allocation, no control group) was used in four studies [36,38,42,46]. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) design was chosen for three studies, either using three study arms [41,43] or four study arms [44].…”

“…Test conditions, comparator conditions and measurement of consumer perception, interpretation and behaviors: All of the included studies involved consumers reporting on serving size information on food packaging via a paper-based [34,37,43] or online survey [33,36,38,42,46] with the use of food models described in five of the papers [33,34,35,39,46]. Eight experiments/surveys specifically provided BOP nutrition facts and serving size labelling [33,34,36,37,40,42,43,44], and three provided both FOP and BOP nutrition facts and serving size labelling [35,38,39]. Seven papers reported having selected discretionary foods to be studied [34,35,36,37,41,42,44], five used both discretionary and core foods [33,38,39,45,46], and two studies involved the use of generic food labels [40,43].…”