Nguyễn Thị Minh Thu- 1752523 CC02

1) Main influence of the FOP nutrition labelling on the average healthfulness of food choise
- FOP nutrition labelling affects to nutritional composition of the shopping cart
The products included in the shopping cart of the control group were less healthful than those
included when participants completed the task with the traffic light system and warnings. Both
FOP labels were able to significantly decrease the average content of calories, sugars and
saturated fats purchased by participants. There was a reduction in the energy density , sugar,
saturated fat and sodium content .
Participants in the control group purchased a significantly higher amount of calories, sugar,
satu- rated fat and sodium than those exposed to warnings or the traffic light system during the
shopping simulation.
- Number of products with high content of at least one key nutrient
The number of products with high content of one or more key nutrients purchased by
participants who completed the task with nutrition information was significantly lower than for
those in the control group

2) Healthy goal added in experimental design

In the present work, conducted with a health goal, FOP labels caused a significant
reduction in the average nutritional composition (energy density, sugar, saturated fat and
sodium) of the products included in participants’ shopping cart compared to the control group
who completed the task without nutrition information. This might suggest that a certain
consumer disposition to consider ‘health’ in their food choices is needed for FOP schemes to be
effective in modifying consumer behaviour . A similar finding has been recently shown in a direct
comparison of a preference versus health task (Aschemann-Witzel et al., 2013), suggesting that
health motivation might be a key factor that influences actual usage of the FOP labelling.
Therefore, it might be recommended to combine the implementation of FOP labels such as the
traffic light system and warnings with educational or social marketing campaigns aimed at
increasing people's interest to eat more healthfully, as well as signage in stores encouraging
active healthy eating goals at the point where food purchase decisions are made. The ‘forced
health task’, which was used in this study to simulate the potential situation of a consumer
motivated to choose healthily by other policy measures, cannot be expected to be realistic for
all food consumers.
3) Describe the main limitations and advantages of the experiment design
Advantages:
-FOP nutrition labelling schemes effectively improved the average healthfulness of food choice
by respondents. Thus, the findings suggest that FOP schemes hold a potential contribution to
improving consumer food choices in the direction of healthy diets.
-Previous research on FOP labelling schemes suggests some potential advantages of FOP labels
even for consumers who do not have an immediate health goal in mind.Thus, if FOP labels have
such an effect on consumer confidence, they can have a po- tential effect in the long run, given
that research has shown that a behaviour becomes more likely if there is confidence and belief
in one's self-efficacy to conduct the behaviour.
- Another potential advantage of FOP labels, also for consumers who do not use them when
making their food choices, is that food companies are encouraged to reformulate their products
in order to retain a competitive advantage or pre-empt legislative changes.
Limitation:
Regarding the comparison of the two FOP labelling formats, results from the present work
showed that the traffic light system and warnings had an effect, but there were no large
differences among them. The findings of the present work as such do not support the authors’
hypothesis that there might be a strong apparent difference between the performance of the
warnings and the traffic light system.