Nutrition and Food Labelling: The Impact of Established Front of Pack (FoP) Label Systems on Behaviour

Dear Colleagues,

Nutritional labelling of food products has been a focus of policy for more than forty years as governments grapple with the consequences of modern highly processed foods and sophisticated marketing. Over this period, attempts to inform consumers by nutrition information panels (NIPs) on the back of food products have been supplemented by attempts to persuade them by front of pack (FoP) labels on the prime facings.

These efforts have not been well coordinated, and many FoP systems that display a wide variety of architectures have now become established around the world (traffic light label (TLL), percentage daily intake (PDI), health star rating (HSR), Chilean warning labels (CWL) and ‘tick’ formats).

Some of these established FoP systems are voluntary, and some are mandatory. However, all of them are poorly supported by research that directly investigates their effectiveness in the marketplace and that directly measures their impact upon consumer and supplier behaviour. What research does exist is inconclusive with regard to the value of these systems to the communities that they serve.

This Special Issue aims to address this weakness in the literature and will be dedicated to research that directly examines the effectiveness of these established FoP label formats. 

The call is therefore for research articles that measure the impact of established FoP systems on consumer behaviour and choice, and also on manufacturer behaviours such as formulation, design and promotion. Quantitative articles that measure the impact of any established FoP label format on unprompted consumer choice, either by the use of designs that conceal the purpose of the research, or by the use of ‘in market’ data/observation, will be particularly welcome. Similar research that measures changes in food industry behaviour at any level in response to the application of established FoP label formats will also be welcome.

Prof. Robert Hamlin
Prof. Lisa McNeill
Guest Editors

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