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Are Nutrition Claims Misleading?
July 2012
Researchers in the UK have investigated consumer awareness and understanding of nutrition claims made on food and drink products, and have found that shoppers are confused and misled by the reality behind them.
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July 2012
Are nutrition claims misleading?
Researchers in the UK have investigated consumer awareness and understanding of nutrition claims made on food and drink products, and have found that shoppers are confused and misled by the reality behind them.
The study performed at Leatherhead Food Research in Surrey looked in particular at nutrition claims relating to sugars, such as ‘low sugars’, ‘reduced sugars’ and ‘now contains X% less sugars’. It also explored consumer knowledge of the calorie content of different nutrients and how this is perceived to change when a reduction claim was present.
Consumers reported a good awareness of product claims, with the shoppers having seen claims ranging from low fat and low cholesterol to those about wholegrains and energy. They also reported being familiar with reduced claims, but expressed negativity towards their taste expectations of these products. In general products carrying a reduced nutrient claim were viewed as having an inferior taste to the original variety.
When exploring knowledge on calories the researchers found that consumers are quite simply confused about the calorie content of different nutrients. Almost a quarter (23.6%) wrongly reported sugar (4kcal) to have a higher caloric value than fat (9kcal) or alcohol (7kcal) and 9.7% ranked salt as being the nutrient highest in calories.
When the researchers investigated understanding and knowledge of the requirements to make a reduced sugars claim, they discovered that the consumers had virtually no idea of how much of a reduction in sugar was needed in order to be able to make the claim. Expectations ranged from a 1 to 50% reduction requirement.
Combining the confusion on calorie content with a lack of awareness of the amount of reduction required to make a reduced sugars claim, resulted in consumers feeling deceived when sugar reduction claims were made but did not correspond with significant calorie reductions. The consumers reported that they expected a similar reduction in the number of calories to the reduction in sugars, so a 10% reduction in sugars was expected to equal a ~10% reduction in calories.
With labelling playing a key role in public health campaigns this study highlights the fact that more consumer information is required to aid the public’s understanding when it comes to calories and nutrition claims.
This paper clearly shows that manufacturers and policy makers need to consider public knowledge and expectations for future campaigns and in product reformulation. As for sugar, at least, there is a clear link to the consumer between sugars and calories, with reductions in a product’s sugars content being expected to also result in a similar reduction in calories – something that is not always the case.
Ends.
Patterson NJ et al. (2012) Consumer Understanding of sugars claims on food and drink products. Nutrition Bulletin. 37: 121-130
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