Abstract
Objective
To study the influence of 2 interpretational aids of front-of-package (FOP) nutrition
labels (color code and text descriptors) on attentional capture and consumers’ understanding
of nutritional information.
Design
A full factorial design was used to assess the influence of color code and text descriptors
using visual search and eye tracking.
Participants
Ten trained assessors participated in the visual search study and 54 consumers completed
the eye-tracking study.
Main Outcome Measures
In the visual search study, assessors were asked to indicate whether there was a label
high in fat within sets of mayonnaise labels with different FOP labels. In the eye-tracking
study, assessors answered a set of questions about the nutritional content of labels.
Analysis
The researchers used logistic regression to evaluate the influence of interpretational
aids of FOP nutrition labels on the percentage of correct answers. Analyses of variance
were used to evaluate the influence of the studied variables on attentional measures
and participants’ response times.
Results
Response times were significantly higher for monochromatic FOP labels compared with
color-coded ones (3,225 vs 964 ms; P < .001), which suggests that color codes increase attentional capture. The highest
number and duration of fixations and visits were recorded on labels that did not include
color codes or text descriptors (P < .05). The lowest percentage of incorrect answers was observed when the nutrient
level was indicated using color code and text descriptors (P < .05).
Conclusions and Implications
The combination of color codes and text descriptors seems to be the most effective
alternative to increase attentional capture and understanding of nutritional information.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 13, 2015
Accepted:
February 26,
2015
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest Disclosure: The authors’ conflict of interest disclosures can be found online with this article on www.jneb.org.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
