Products with front-of-pack symbols not healthier

11 November 2014

Front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition symbols are used on food labels worldwide. In the absence of standardized criteria for their use, it is unclear if FOP symbols are being used to promote products more nutritious than products without symbols.
Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada found that products with FOP symbols were not more nutritious than products without these symbols. Because FOP symbols may influence consumer perceptions of products and their purchases, they state that it may be a useful public health strategy to set minimum nutritional standards for products using FOP symbol marketing. An article about the research is published in Appetite.
Click here for an abstract of the article.

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