Influencing eating behavior through food labeling?

Abstract

Background: Food labeling has been discussed and introduced as a policy to make the consumer more aware about the energy and nutrient content of food with the hope that the well-informed consumer will make healthier food choices. Methods and Objective: This narrative review examines the evidence of the effects of food labels and nutrition information on food choice and food intake of consumers. Results: A number of studies support the idea that food labeling is effective in helping the consumer to understand which foods are more or less healthy. There are some differences between food label formats in achieving objective understanding of differences between foods. However, there is no convincing evidence that such understanding will have the intended effects on actual food intake. Instead, food intake has been either largely unaffected or even increased in response to nutrition information. A reason for the limited effectiveness of nutrition information and food labeling may be seen in the highly automatic features of eating behavior that are difficult to consciously control. Conclusion: It is unlikely that the well-informed consumer will make much more healthy food choices and that food labeling is effective in containing the epidemic of obesity.