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Nutrition labeling schemes and the time and effort of consumer processing
Alonso Dos Santos, Manuel
Quilodrán Ulloa, René
Salgado Quintana, Álvaro
Vigueras Quijada, Diego
Farías Nazel, Pablo
Sustainability
2019
Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) and nutrition tables are the most used front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition labeling schemes in the world; however, they are hard to process considering the nutritional knowledge, effort, and time needed for interpretation. Consumers spend little time and effort evaluating food products. Consumers are selective, and FOP nutrition labeling schemes should be too. Recent studies have shown that warning messages—a new FOP nutrition labeling scheme—improves consumers’ ability to correctly identify less-healthy products. This study proposes that warning messages are also easier to process. Using eye-tracking, this study demonstrates that warning messages require less processing effort and time than GDA and nutrition tables. This study also shows that females process warning messages easier than males. Additionally, this study found no significant differences between physically active and inactive consumers in their processing of warning messages. The results are robust across product categories and brands.
Front-of-pack nutrition labeling schemes
Warningmessages
Eye-tracking
Consumer processing
Geografía social y económica
Ciencias de la tierra y medioambientales
Ciencias químicas
Ingeniería ambiental