Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.newswise.com
Newswise — Walk through supermarkets in Germany and Israel and shoppers encounter two very different approaches to nutrition labeling.
Germany uses Nutri-Score, which summarizes a food’s nutritional profile on a five-level scale from a green A to a red E. Israel instead requires red warning labels on foods high in sugar, sodium or saturated fat, alongside a voluntary green label for certain healthier foods.
A new study led by Dr. Gerrit Hummel and Prof. Nanette Stroebele-Benschop of the University of Hohenheim, and Prof. Eyal Ert and Prof. Aron M. Troen of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem directly compared the two systems using eye-tracking technology, measuring not only what consumers said about the labels, but what they actually looked at and how healthy they perceived it to be.
Published in Frontiers in Nutrition, the study included 223 participants, 112 in Germany and 111 in Israel. Participants viewed food packages displaying either Nutri-Score or Israeli warning and green labels while researchers tracked their eye movements. They then rated the products for healthfulness, expected taste and likelihood of purchase.
The results showed that both label design and familiarity matter. Participants spent more time examining unfamiliar labels, while familiar labels were noticed more quickly. Germans looked longer at the Israeli labels, while Israelis spent more time looking at Nutri-Score, but in both countries participants detected their familiar national label faster.
The two labelling systems also appeared to communicate differently about less-healthy foods.
Perhaps most notably, products carrying explicit red warnings tended to receive more critical evaluations than the same products presented with Nutri-Score, which generally produced more moderate judgments. In addition, participants in both countries rated the Israeli warning-label system as easier to understand and more helpful for choosing healthy foods than Nutri-Score, despite their very different levels of familiarity with the systems.
“Food labels are not just graphics on a package. They are public-health interventions,” said the researchers. “Whether a system gives a food an overall score or explicitly warns that it is high in sugar, sodium or saturated fat can change what consumers notice and what they understand. Decisions about these systems should therefore be based on evidence about how people actually respond to them.”
The findings come at a particularly important moment internationally.
The European Union has been considering a harmonized mandatory front-of-package nutrition label, but disagreement remains over what form such a system should take. The debate reflects a broader question: should labels provide consumers with an overall nutritional score, or clearly warn them when specific nutrients exceed recommended levels?
The same discussion is taking place in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration has proposed a front-of-package “Nutrition Info” box that would classify saturated fat, sodium and added sugars as “Low,” “Med” or “High.”
The researchers stress out that the study does not establish one universal “best” label. Nutri-Score can help consumers compare products along a nutritional scale, while nutrient-specific warnings serve a different purpose by drawing attention to potentially problematic ingredients. The current findings show that the way nutrition information is communicated is not neutral.
“Different systems are designed to achieve different things,” Troen said. “The question policymakers need to ask is not simply which label people prefer, but which system best achieves the public-health goal they are trying to accomplish.”
The researchers also caution that the study used controlled, fictional food packages and non-representative samples, meaning larger and more diverse studies will be needed. Still, the international comparison offers new evidence that effective labels must not only contain the right information, but also attract attention and be easily understood.
As Europe and the United States consider changes to food labelling, the study highlights a simple but important point: what governments put on the front of a food package can shape what consumers actually see.
