The effect of front-of-pack nutritional labels and back-of-pack tables on dietary quality

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  • Helene Normann Rønnow
A healthy diet is important to prevent lifestyle diseases. Food labels have been proposed as a policy tool to improve the healthiness of food choices, as they provide information about nutritional content and health attributes which may otherwise have been unknown to the consumer. This study investigates the effect of food labels with different formats on dietary quality by using home-scan panel data and difference-in-difference methods to compare the change in dietary quality over time for households that start to use food labels with households that do not use labels. I find that the use of front-of-pack (FOP) nutritional labels increases overall dietary quality, which is driven by reduced intake of added sugar and increased intake of fiber. The use of back-of-pack (BOP) nutritional tables does not influence dietary quality. There is no additional benefit to overall dietary quality by using both labels. However, the results indicate that there could be a benefit of using both labels on certain nutrients. The results imply that additional policies are needed to supplement food labels in order to improve dietary quality.
Original languageEnglish
Article number1704
JournalNutrients
Volume12
Issue number6
Number of pages34
ISSN2072-6643
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

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