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With multiple theoretical traditions, diverse topical landscape and rapid regulatory advancements galvanising the ongoing discourse, the emergent marketing scholarship on healthy and unhealthy food and beverages (F&B) has become exhaustive, fragmented and almost non-navigable. Accordingly, this study aims to synthesise and trace two decades of research focused on healthy and unhealthy F&B marketing.

This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of papers published between 2000 and 2020. The data was retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, yielding 338 papers for final analysis. Using VOSviewer software and the Biblioshiny package, the authors performed a detailed bibliometric analysis comprising performance analysis and science mapping.

The study delineated the contribution, theoretical and thematic structure of healthy and unhealthy F&B marketing scholarship. The authors also mapped the evolution trajectory of the thematic structure, which helped us contemplate the research gaps.

By delving deeper into the “who”, “where”, “how”, “what” and “when” of healthy and unhealthy F&B marketing, the study enhances the current understandings and future developments for both theorists and practitioners. However, the selection of literature is confined to peer-reviewed papers available in WoS and Scopus.

The findings delineate the existing scholarship which could guide F&B marketers and policymakers towards designing consumer-centric marketing/policy interventions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to perform a bibliometric analysis of healthy and unhealthy F&B marketing, likely to provide valuable guidelines for future scholars, policymakers and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumer attitudes towards the potential implementation of compulsory nutritional labelling on commercial restaurant menus in the UK.

The research was approached from the perspective of the consumer with the intention of gaining an insight into personal attitudes towards nutritional labelling on commercial restaurant menus and three focus groups were conducted consisting of participants with distinctly differing approaches to eating outside the home.

The research suggests that, while some consumers might welcome the introduction of nutritional labelling, it is context‐dependent and without an appropriate education the information provided may not be understood anyway. The issue of responsibility for public health is unresolved, although some effort could be made to provide greater nutritional balance in menus.

Following this research with a quantitative investigation, the ideas presented could be verified with the opinions of a larger sample. For example, a study into the reactions to nutritionally labelled menus in various restaurant environments.

Consumers would react differently if this information were to be presented in a fine‐dining restaurant rather than in a popular catering or fast food scenario. The obstacles faced by restaurants to provide not only nutritional information, but also attractive, nutritious food are significant.

Prior to the research there were few, if any, studies into the effects of food labelling on consumer choice behaviour in the context of hospitality management.

This study aims to evaluate the carbohydrate content, ingredient profile and degree of processing of supposedly “low-carb” foods in the Brazilian market.

Information was collected from physical supermarkets in Divinópolis, Minas Gerais and on websites throughout Brazil between July and September/2020. The carbohydrate content was assessed in g/100 g, and ingredient lists were investigated for the presence of carbohydrate-rich ingredients. The degree of processing of the products was evaluated by NOVA classification to determine whether the term “low carb” had been translated into Portuguese.

This study evaluated a total number of 164 products, the most frequent were bakery products (34.7%), granola and cereal bars (19.5%) and candies and desserts (14.0%). This claim was also found in low-carb foods such as cheese and chicken. Most food products evaluated (56.0%) were classified as ultra-processed, with the group having the highest carbohydrate content (20.0; 3.0–47.5g/100g), compared to products classified as processed foods (p < 0.01). The ingredient lists showed items rich in carbohydrates, such as cassava and corn derivatives. In 162 products, a low-carb claim was displayed without translation into Portuguese. These data demonstrate that most of these products are ultra-processed and have a high glycidic content.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study was a pioneer investigation of the ingredients of “low-carb” foods, their carbohydrate composition and their degree of processing based on the NOVA classification.

The purpose of this paper is to assess consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for three different food claims on semi-cured, pasteurized sheep milk cheese. In particular, the authors used a health-related claim (the nutritional claim indicating a reduced fat content: “light”), a regional claim (“designation of origin – PDO”) and an organic claim (the European organic logo). Moreover, the authors investigated whether consumers’ personal characteristics could influence their WTP for those types of cheese.

A home-grown experimental auction was applied in Spain during Spring 2012. The authors opted to use the nth random price with repeated rounds and without price feedback.

The results show that consumers were willing to pay more for PDO cheese, followed by organic and light cheese. Moreover, respondents who were female, older and with a university-level education showed some environmental concerns, influencing their WTP for different cheeses.

Empirical evidence on consumers’ preferences for PDO, organic and nutritional claims, evaluated jointly, is lacking in Spain. Moreover, the home-grown auction has several merits in terms of real market simulation and consumer preference application.

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the effectiveness of pictorial warning labels that leverage the risk of obesity as a deterrent against alcohol abuse. It evaluates the impact of three different kinds of warning labels that can potentially discourage alcoholic drinking: (1) a claim, in text format, that cautions consumers about the product (i.e. a responsibility warning statement); (2) a textual warning label, text-format information on the content of the product or the consequences of excessive consumption (i.e. a synthetic nutritional table); (3) a pictorial warning label, an image depicting a food product with a caloric content equivalent to that of an alcoholic beverage.

In Study 1, a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design is used to evaluate the intention to buy different alcoholic cocktails. The stimuli comprised two cocktails that are similar in alcoholic volume, but different in their caloric content. The images of the products were presented across eight warning label conditions and shown to 480 randomly selected Italian respondents who quantified their intention to buy the product. In Study 2, a different sample of 34 Italian respondents was solicited with the same stimuli considered in Study 1, and neuropsychological measurements through Electroencephalography (EEG) were registered. A post hoc least significance difference (LSD) test is used to analyse data.

The results show that only the presence of an image representing an alcoholic beverage's caloric content causes a significant reduction in consumers' purchase intentions. This effect is due to the increase in negative emotions caused by pictorial warning labels.

The findings provide interesting insights on pictorial warning labels, which can influence the intention to purchase alcoholic beverages. They confirmed that the use of images in the warning labels has a greater impact than text, and that the risk of obesity is an effective deterrent in encouraging consumers to make healthier choices.

The purpose of this paper is to fulfil gaps in knowledge regarding food packaging practices in Southeast Asia by examining the informational content of food labels on a variety of packaged foods.

Using local and imported food products found in supermarkets in Singapore, a quantitative content analysis of food label claims in a wide range of packaged food products was conducted. A codebook was developed to capture the attributes of the food labels and claims, content categories, product names, food categories, sources of manufacture and countries of brand origin. The three main regions of analysis of country of manufacture were the USA, European Union (EU) and Southeast Asia.

Analysis of food products manufactured in five Southeast Asian countries revealed the presence of various claims in food products, and a number of specific claims exceeded the percentages found in products from the USA or EU. The results showed that a significant proportion of products from Southeast Asian countries display nutrient content and nutrient function claims, as well as general marketing claims and non-nutrient claims. However, there were variations in practice amongst the five Southeast Asian countries.

The sample was limited in being collected from one geographic location. Future research needs to expand data collection both geographically and longitudinally.

The findings are valuable for the national health authorities in addressing policies on food package labelling, and homogenization efforts pertaining to regional/international labelling policies. These in turn could influence food marketing practices.

The findings are useful in crafting educational programming and guidelines for health and nutrition education.

This research is the first to explore food labelling practices in multiple Southeast Asian countries and compare them cross-sectionally with EU and US practices.

The interest of food consumers in improved quality, healthiness, freshness, and authenticity results in a growing introduction of new food products featuring a variety of “positive” (e.g. “Enriched with Vitamin D”) and “negative” (e.g. “Low in Fat”) label claims. It's the goal of this paper to uncover how the presence of positive and absence of negative benefits or attributes balance in the minds of consumers, determine which label claims would have the greatest impact on consumers' intention to buy milk, and understand the role of stating these in either a positive or a negative frame.

To achieve the objectives of this paper, we utilize (1) descriptive study to identify which claims are currently used by the dairy marketing practitioners, (2) focus group to identify the importance of positive and negative product claims, and (3) online survey including discrete choice experiment (DCE) to determine the effect of positive and negative claims on consumer food choices.

We provide evidence of negative bias in consumers facing the choice between foods with enriched positive ingredients vs foods that are free-from negative ingredients. Specifically, we find that consumers have a general tendency toward giving negative attributes more weight than positive ones.

The research was conducted in one food category.

This research should encourage food marketers to include more positive statements about their products rather than the current focus on negatives such as no GMOs or no hormones. the authors understand these negative attributes need to be made but there should also be positive attributes.

Consumers will get a total picture of the product values and not skewed to one point.

The concept of negative bias has not be adequately explored in the food category on product labels.

This study analyzed the factors affecting visual attention toward sugar-reduction information (SRI) on sugar-reduced beverages (SRBs) and identified the most optimal SRI type and location using eye-tracking. The eye-tracking results were compared with those of a self-reported questionnaire.

An eye-tracking experiment was conducted on 50 Korean people in their 20s and 30s to analyze implicit responses. Subsequently, a self-reported questionnaire was administered to analyze explicit responses, facilitating the investigation of perceptions, attitudes, preferences, intentions to purchase SRBs, and preferred SRI types and positions.

The results were as follows. First, personal trait-, state-, and product-related factors were found to affect eye movement in relation to SRI. Second, eye-tracking revealed that SRI types and locations that drew long-lasting fixation and attracted considerable attention were similar to those preferred in the self-reported questionnaire. Therefore, to efficiently convey information on SRBs, SRI should be combined with a graphic, and not merely a word, and placed in the upper-right corner, exhibiting consistency with the results of two previous experiments.

This study specifically focused on considering personal and product-related traits while conducting an eye-tracking experiment to investigate the factors that attract consumers' attention. Furthermore, this study is the first to investigate the use of SRI labels to promote SRB selection. What is significant is that both explicit and implicit responses were assessed and compared via a self-reported survey and eye-tracking experiments for various SRB categories.

For generations, Britain has had a household delivery of fresh milk; from the days before the Great War when it was delivered by a horse‐drawn milk float, with the roundsman often bringing the housewife to the door with his cries of “Milk‐O!”. The float had a churn and milk was delivered in a small can, served out by a dipper. This was the start of the distributive trade, organised between the Wars, from which the present industry has emerged. The trade gave universal acceptance to the glass bottle, returnable for household delivery, only the method of sealing has changed. There have been many demands for its abandonment in favour of the carton, of which recent years has seen a rise in its use in the increasing sales of milk by supermarkets and stores. Despite the problems with returnable vessels, the glass bottle has a number of advantages. The milk, including the cream line, is clearly visible, and short measure is most unlikely, which is a growing problem with carton‐filled milk. The number of prosecutions for short measure with cartons must be causing concern to trading standards departments. There is nothing to indicate the offence until the carton is opened.

The purpose of this research is to trace the evolution of the claims used for advertising food products in Italian magazines, by analysing the content and structure of the claims, the target audiences and the elements that have the greatest influence on the presence of the claims in food advertising.

On the basis of the research conducted by Pratt and Pratt (1995), revised and adapted to the Italian food context, the authors designed a matrix of 1,316 advertisements, which were selected based on the analysis of 67,340 advertisements and using the reference to the food sector as a discriminator. The advertisements were extrapolated from a sample of six Italian magazines, so as to determine the extent to which the various demographic groups in Italy are exposed to print advertising for food, beverages and food supplements. The authors examined the frequency of the relevant advertising forms over a period of four years, from January 2014 to December 2017.

The results revealed the main types of claims used in the four-year period, as well as the statistically significant differences between the different magazine panels, as concerns the frequency and the types of messages. Moreover, a strong relationship between the number of advertisements in the magazines and the time of the year was also ascertained, as well as significant gender variations.

This study introduces the trends and dynamics of the Italian printed advertising for food to the relevant scientific literature. The results yielded by this research have added further implications and contributions to the existing studies, as concerns claim diffusion based on type, gender and seasonality, and the authors also provide important insights to various socio-economical stakeholders.