The new food label, type of fat, and consumer choice. A pilot study
K. B. Hrovat, K. Z. Harris, A. D. Leach, B. S. Russell, B. V. Harris and D. L. Sprecher
Department of Internal Medicine, University of Cincinnati, Ohio.
OBJECTIVES: To determine how frequently lay consumers evaluate both the
front label of a product package and other nutritional information on the
back label of the package; whether the nutritional descriptors on the front
label that concern fat affect consumer choice; to what degree information
on the back label redirects this choice; and how well consumers understand
the percent daily value on the new food label. DESIGN: Preliminary
cross-sectional survey. SETTING: General community and university setting.
PARTICIPANTS: Volunteer sample of 200 men and women. METHODS/RESULTS:
Participants were first asked to choose between two fabricated cookie
packages, one with a "low fat" and the other with a "no saturated fat"
front label. Eighty-four percent of participants made their product choice
without turning the package to view the back label. Thirty-six percent
chose the product with the low fat front label, while 64% chose the product
with the no saturated fat front label. In contrast, when respondents were
subsequently presented with two cake products that contained no front-label
descriptors (which resulted in 100% of subjects turning the package to view
the back label), 53% chose the product with a label indicating 6 g of total
fat (none saturated), while 47% chose the product with a label indicating 4
g of total fat (all saturated). Thirty-two of the 94 respondents who chose
the no saturated fat cookie (only viewing the front label and giving fat
content as the reason for their choice) chose a cake product in which the
fat was all saturated, based on back-label nutrition information. Finally,
56% of participants could not accurately use the new percent daily value
component to calculate saturated fat content. CONCLUSIONS: The data from
this pilot study suggest that consumers make product choices based on only
viewing the front-label information; health claims on the front label that
are related to fat do affect product choice; a choice made based on the
information on the front label is potentially altered once the back label
is viewed; and approximately one half of our population could not clearly
understand the percent daily value. We conclude that current consumer
choice may be overly influenced by industry-directed claims placed on the
front of a product package.
