Use of nutritional food labels and consumers’ confidence in label information

Abstract

Objective

This investigation evaluated the use of food labels and consumers’ perception of the reliability of food labels nutritional information.
Methods

This is a transversal exploratory quantitative investigation, carried out in Curitiba, Brazil. A total of 536 students from a public institution participated in the survey answering a structured questionnaire. Descriptive analyses, Chi-Square test and Fisher’s exact test were performed considering a significance level of 5%.

Results
The participants’ mean age was 21.11±2.83 years, and 59.3% were female. It was noticed that 41.6% of consumers used the nutritional information sometimes and 14.7% always, mainly because they liked to know what they were buying and consuming (35.8%). Lack of patience (29.5%) and concern about the composition of the food purchased (34.2%) were the main reasons for not using the information provided. The most commonly used nutrition claim was “trans fat-free” (42.5%) and the type of food in which nutrition labeling was used most was milk and dairy products (42.0%). Frequent use of nutritional information was higher among
women (p<0.01) and among those who practice physical activity (p=0.04). Many individuals relied on food labels nutritional information (61.9%), but out of these, 43.6% did not use that information at the time of purchase. There was no difference between respondents’ confidence in the information, sociodemographic and health data.

Conclusion
Many people still do not use the label nutrition information. Efforts should be made to change this scenario. Changes in nutrition labeling can help modify this situation, with the use of clearer label information, more easily understood, that does not raise any doubts in the consumers’ mind.