How Relevant Are Nutrition and Health Claims in Healthier Food Choices of Romanian Consumers?

Abstract

In European Union, concerns for improving the legislative framework of food labeling materialized in Regulation 1924 (2006) which aims to harmonize the rules used for nutrition and health claims such as “source of vitamin D” or “calcium contributes to normal muscle function” addressed to the average consumer; these concerns were accentuated in 2012 by the adoption of Regulation 432, which approves a list of permitted health claims. In compliance with European law, this paper's goal is to examine how the use of nutrition and health claims modifies Romanian customers' dietary choices and overall health. The challenges and difficulties encountered in the implementation and enforcement of this regulation raised interest for our research. Using the advantages of a statistical survey with a sample of 200 people of different genders, ages and educational levels, we aimed to evaluate the effect of nutrition and health claims on food consumption decisions; thus, it is highlighted how the consumers use individual factors (personal eating style), product sensory characteristics (taste) and shelf-life cognitive cues (nutrition label, brand, price) in food selection, but also how this selection influences their food consumption. The results of this work can be helpful to analyze the perception of Romanian consumers about the efficiency, accuracy and consistency of these mentions present on food product labels. The research is all the more valuable as recently many studies have focused on the analysis of BOP (Back-of-pack) or FOP (Front-of-pack) labeling systems. We conclude by discussing possible opportunities to improve the comprehensiveness of these mentions so that consumers can more easily direct their choices towards nutritionally balanced foods and, thus, stimulate and support the responsible behavior of producers.