The University of Nottingham’s division of food, nutrition and dietetics carried out a survey on 858 participants using a traffic light labelling system (TLL) to select healthy foods.
Ola Anabtawi, who led the research published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, said: “When using the TLL consumers often have to make trade-offs between undesirable attributes and decide which to use to guide them in making a choice.
“We wanted to find out whether it was fat, saturated fat, sugar or salt they most wanted to avoid and see whether the traffic light labelling was influencing this decision.”
The traffic light labelling system involved a red, amber and green coding system to highlight nutritional information. Products flagged with a red label were avoided more than green label food items.
Participants also avoided foods with high sugar content in comparison to products with high fat or salt content.
Anabtawi added: “Participants’ decisions about the healthiness of food products were significantly influenced by TLL information on the items’ sugar content. TLL do, therefore, appear to be guide consumers beliefs in the absence of deep knowledge.
“The dominance of sugar in decision-making shows the labelling system is having an impact in the current public health climate. However, it is important to consider the effect of disregarding other nutrients (i.e. fat and salt) for people with different nutritional needs. We suggest raising awareness of all nutrients to help the public achieve the well- balanced diet.”