Do Nutrient and Health Claims Have an Impact on the Perceived Healthiness of Foods?

• Project start date: 1 April 2016
• Project status: Completed
• Project type: Food safety
• Discipline: Nutrition
• Principal researcher/s: Dr Moira Dean, Queen’s University of Belfast
• Collaborator/s: Dr Amanda McCloat, St. Angela’s College Sligo, Prof Monique Raats, University of Surrey, Prof Jayne Woodside & Mr Stefan Durand, QUB, Dr Tamara Bucher, ETH Zurich, Prof Michael Siegriest, ETH, Zurich

Research objective

• Determine (through focus groups made up of adults on the island of Ireland) if nutrition and health claims stated on food packaging and advertising can affect:
  • Consumers’ perceptions (how a claim is regarded, understood or interpreted; for example, its perceived tastiness, healthiness and “fillingness” or satiety).
  • Consumption behaviour.
• Explore (through a nationally representative survey of adults on the island of Ireland) the relationships between nutrition and health claims, food portion size selection, sociodemographic factors (for example, age, gender, and socioeconomic status), personal characteristics (for example, motivations, knowledge, attitudes) and other factors.
• Investigate (using buffet meal experiments) the impact of nutrition and health claims on consumer portion size selection at:
  • a single meal (breakfast, hot meal, snack)
  • a subsequent meal.
•  Examine (through an experiment where participants consume breakfast) whether actual physical fullness (as measured by the gut peptide ghrelin) varies depending on the perceptions a person has of a food product before consuming it.

Outputs

Research report

• Title: Do nutrition and health claims on food packaging impact on consumers’ choice?
• Publication date: 2 December 2019
• Summary: Nutrition and health claims on foods can help consumers make healthier food choices. However, claims may have a ‘halo’ effect, influencing consumer perceptions of foods and increasing consumption.
• Findings:
  • The literature review found that claims related to fat were the most common nutrition claims, while claims related to the digestive system and cholesterol were common health claims. Breakfast cereals, dairy products (particularly yoghurts) and drinks were often found to carry nutrition and health claims.
  • Focus group participants had a good awareness of nutrition and health claims and the reasons food producers might have for making claims. These consumers had relatively good knowledge of claims and were able to give examples of claims when prompted. However, they did not extend to understanding the exact technical meaning of claims.
  • Survey participants had relatively little knowledge and did not understand what nutrition and health claims meant. Nutrition and health claims did not affect how healthy or tasty these consumers thought a selection of 4 different foods to be, but did influence how filling they thought the foods would be. Psychological factors explained the greatest differences in these consumers’ perceptions of food, such as use and knowledge of claims, eating behaviour, general health interest, believability in claims and familiarity with the foods. In particular, those who believed the claims were more likely to view food as heathier, tastier and more filling than those who did not believe the claims. These psychological factors also explained the greatest differences in portion size selection. People with less control over their eating, with a lower interest in health, with higher beliefs in the claims and who were less familiar with the foods selected larger portion sizes for the 4 different food types presented. Nutrition and health claims did not affect the portion size that survey participants selected.
  • In buffet meal experiment 1, participants served themselves larger servings of drinks when there were no claims present.
  • In buffet meal experiment 2, participants did not adjust their portion size selection at a subsequent meal having selected food and drink with claims at the previous meal.
  • In the breakfast experiment, researchers found that the presence of claims on a granola and yoghurt product affected how healthy participants thought the breakfast was and how healthy they felt whilst eating the breakfast.
• Recommendations:
  • Consumers should be supported in how to read and interpret food labels as one aspect of food literacy. Improving consumers’ knowledge will enable them to understand nutrition and health claims and they can use this knowledge when they are deciding what to buy and how much to eat or drink.

  Key messages for consumers

  • Just because a food or drink product has a nutrition or health claim on the packet such as “low sugar” does not mean that it is a healthier choice – check the nutrition information on the label and the front-of-pack label, too.
  • Consumers should be encouraged to follow healthy eating guidelines for food choices and to serve or consume the recommended portion sizes of all food and drink products, including those carrying nutrition and health claims.

  You can download the report below.

Other outputs

Peer reviewed articles

Benson, T., Lavelle, F., Bucher, T., McCloat, A., Mooney, E., Egan, B., Collins, C. E., & Dean, M. (2018). The Impact of Nutrition and Health Claims on Consumer Perceptions and Portion Size Selection: Results from a Nationally Representative Survey. Nutrients, 10(5), 656. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu10050656

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