Do nutritional warnings do their work? Results from a choice experiment involving snack products

Nutritional warnings have been recently introduced as a new front-of-pack nutrition labelling scheme. Its particular goal is to facilitate the identification of products with excessive content of nutrients, given these are associated with non-communicable diseases. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the influence of nutritional warnings on consumers' choice of a snack in a choice experiment involving real products. A total of 199 participants were asked to evaluate a series of bread images on a computer screen using eye-tracking glasses. Once they finished the task, they were invited to help themselves a snack from a shelf as a compensation for their participation in the study. A total of 15 snack products with different nutritional composition were included on the shelf. Participants were randomly divided into groups: one that made their choice from a shelf containing products that did not include front-of-package nutritional information, whereas the other chose among products that featured nutritional warnings. Participants in both experiments invested an average of 14s to select their product. When products were presented with warnings, 50% of the participants fixated their gaze on the warnings during the choice task. Significant differences in the frequency of selection of the products (p = 0.002) were found between the groups. When the warnings were present, participants chose products with fewer warnings and lower average sodium, saturated fat, and sugar content (p < 0.001). These findings confirm the potential of nutritional warnings to encourage more healthful food choices.