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Nutritional labeling of food products is not mandatory in India at present and the Indian Government is on the verge of introducing a code of conduct for it. The aim of this paper is to provide some initial guidelines for the above‐said purpose so as to have consumer friendly labeling policies.

A structured questionnaire‐based survey was used for the purpose of the study. A total of 100 respondents were considered for the study. Data were collected from two superstores located in New Delhi.

Food labels are read by the consumers for brand comparisons and not for consulting nutritional information. Difficult terminology, small font size and inability to understand nutritional labels are the major problems encountered by the consumers. Television, friends, magazines are commonly used for assessing nutritional information. Labels are considered more consumer friendly when benchmarks regarding serving size are provided. Income level, size of household, number of children and age did not play a role in the usage of nutritional labels by the consumers. Consumers with special dietary needs used nutritional labels regularly.

A small sample size is the limitation of the study.

This is the first study of its kind in India. It is valuable for the Indian Government in framing policies regarding nutritional labeling and for imparting nutritional education. It will also help it to draft consumer friendly labels for effective usage.

This paper aims to present results from a research that analyzed the quality of labels available in the Serbian food market and consumers’ attitudes toward food labels.

A total of 899 food labels have been analyzed in relation to the presence of legally required information, their readability to average consumer and presence of nutritional/health claims and/or nutritional information. In parallel, 400 respondents were interviewed in the survey of consumers’ attitudes regarding labels.

Results revealed that 38.2 per cent of food products hold labels that are not fully readable to average consumers. Regarding basic label information, 11 per cent of foods have missing information in terms of series/lot identification. The majority of the products (87.4 per cent) have only basic nutritional information with 4.6 per cent of products holding nutritional claims. Consumers with active sport activities showed higher awareness of nutritional information. There were no statistically significant differences between smokers and non-smokers regarding their attitudes toward nutritional information. Age and education play a significant role in ranking nutritional facts. The most important nutritional information is fat content, followed by sugar and vitamins.

The nature of the study did not allow conclusions regarding causal relationship between food products and consumers as well as if nutritional information affects consumers’ choices and purchasing patronage.

The findings of this study are worthy, as they report the Serbian consumers’ understanding of labels and nutritional information as well as the status food labels sold in the Serbian market.

This paper seeks to explore the effect of mood states and gender on the relationship between health‐related information and variety seeking (VS) behavior among food products.

Two experiments were conducted to examine the moderating effects of mood states and gender on the relationship between health‐related information and VS.

The results indicate that sad people incorporate more VS than happy people when health warnings and nutritional labeling are absent, but sad and happy people tend to converge to similar levels of VS when health warnings and nutritional labeling are present. Moreover, males incorporate less VS than females when health warnings are present, while females incorporate less VS than males when nutritional labeling is present.

In the absence of health warnings and nutritional labeling, it is a wiser way for leading brands to cultivate positive consumer moods by utilization of humorous ads, so that they do not search for varied products. For less well‐known brands, inducing negative consumer moods is a better way to encourage brand switching. Further, providing nutritional labeling will strengthen consumer brand loyalty by reducing their VS, especially for females. As the health warnings reduce the VS for males, marketers may take advantage of this effect by associating brand names with health warnings.

As VS is found to be related to over‐consumption, it is important to investigate the effects of health‐related information on VS. However, little empirical evidence has been found on the effect of health‐related information on VS behavior. Further, this study takes into consideration moderating factors as it is important for marketers to realize how health‐related information interacts with the consumer's VS behavior under different mood states and gender. The findings demonstrate that the relationship between health‐related information and VS is moderated by mood states and gender differences, an important contribution to the research on VS behavior.

Rates of diseases caused by poor diet have seen no reduction in recent years. In this scenario, nutritional information labels and health claims could play a decisive role in modifying product attitudes and purchase intention (consequently, eating habits). In this frame, the first objective is to analyze the role of three antecedents on attitudes toward nutritional labels and credibility from health claims. These three starting antecedents are as follows: psychological characteristics of the consumer associated with eating disorders, body image attitudes and affective reactions (pleasure and arousal). Second, this paper aims to analyze if both elements (attitudes toward nutritional labels and credibility from health claims) improve (or not) food product attitudes and then, its purchase intention.

The sample comprised 300 young people between 18 and 25 years old. They provided their opinion about a healthy product by completing a structured and personal questionnaire after inspecting the packaging. Path analysis with partial least squares (PLS) was carried out to test the hypotheses stated.

First, psychological characteristics associated with eating disorders (self-concept and self-esteem) have a positive significant influence on body image attitudes. Second, attitudes toward their body image have a great effect on the perception that these consumers have about the information provided by healthy food packaging. Insofar as those whose attitudes toward their body image is “damaged” seek in the nutritional label indications that make them feel calm understanding that the food they are going to buy is not harmful to their health. Moreover, credibility from health claims improves positive attitudes toward the nutritional label. On the contrary, those consumers with higher punctuations in body image assigned lower values to those items concerning nutritional information and health claims in the packaging. Third, if attitudes to nutritional information improve, then product attitudes improve too. Fourth, if product attitudes improve, then purchase intention improves too. So, food product managers should be aware of the need to improve product attitudes by working on the packaging (label and claim) to improve purchase intention.

First, although previous literature has investigated individual psychological characteristics related to food disorders in the health area, the study of these specific individual psychological characteristics (ineffectiveness, perfectionism, interpersonal distrust, interceptive awareness, maturity fears), is under-researched in the marketing discipline. Second, to date, different authors have investigated how important the use of credibility from health claims in packaging can be in terms of increasing product attitudes and purchase intention, as well as the development of positive attitudes toward nutritional information on the label. However, the joint study of both information sources in the packaging (credibility from health claims and attitudes toward nutritional labels) remains under-investigated.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how combined nutrition labelling influences consumer attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and purchase intention for sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs).

This study adopted a mixed method research, quasi-experimental design with 406 valid Taiwanese samples to evaluate the possible effects of combined nutrition labelling on SSB purchase intention; two focus group interviews with four nutritional experts and 12 students were conducted to explain how and why consumers perceived different types of combined nutritional labels.

Combined labels including sugar type/gram with the guideline daily amounts and traffic light display were perceived by consumers as high-quality and reliable, which improved consumer attitude and SSB purchase intention. Consumers perceived the traffic light display and warning claim as a sugar over-consumption message, which reduced SSB purchase intention through subject norms.

Governments should be aware that concrete nutritional information (NIP) leads to the worst SSB consumption. Moreover, the authors suggest that policymakers emphasise the effectiveness of warning claims on SSB products with “sufficient” sugar information to trigger consumers' concern, remind SSB manufacturers of their moral obligation to consumers.

This study identified that the combined effects of nutritional attributes and parts of meanings might be enhanced, eliminated or even separated from their original meaning. Although the label messages were delivered simultaneously, the consumer's psychological perceptions proved to be more complicated than a single attribute and sequentially affected consumer attitudes, subject norms and SSB purchase intention.

The aim is to explore the impact of new menu labels on consumers' actual meal purchases with a field experiment undertaken in a local restaurant.

The author used a field experiment in a natural eating environment at a restaurant to investigate the effect of restaurant menu labelling on consumers' meal choices and opinions on the use of nutritional labels on menus. The experiment included control and treatment conditions in which we offered customers unlabelled and labelled menus, respectively. After individuals' dining experience, the data on meal choices and attitudes to menu labelling was collected via a brief questionnaire. The author then performed inferential statistical analysis to test differences between the control and treatment conditions and logistic regression analysis to explore further what predicts the probability of labels being influential on meal choice.

The study finds that the information provided to the consumers on restaurant menus matters. The more useful the information is perceived by consumers, the more likely the labels will influence their choices. Calorie content and the walking minutes to burn those calories on labels were considered the most useful aspect of the menu labels.

The study contributes to a better understanding of the impact of menu labelling on actual meal purchases, as well as the best way to communicate calorie and nutrient information to consumers. The author also shares her experience designing a field experiment with a restaurateur for future research.

Spain decided to implement NutriScore with the objective of helping consumers to choose healthier foods. NutriScore is a summary indicator interpretative nutritional labelling. This study aims to verify whether the coexistence with other interpretative labelling may influence NutriScore effectiveness.

A questionnaire was used to analyse two different brands in the same category; one of them ranked with a “B” NutriScore rating and the other with a “D” NutriScore rating. The product packaging was shown in four different ways: without indications, with nutrient-specific labels, with summary indicators (NutriScore) and with both interpretative indicators. Having positive and negative evaluations of NutriScore allowed us to assess its impact. Structural equation modelling (SEM), Student t-test and F-test were employed with a sample of 301 questionnaires.

The different formats of the interpretative labels did not moderate the relationship between perceived healthiness and purchase intention. When a food product is given positive evaluation from NutriScore, nutrient-specific interpretative labelling reinforces the effect of NutriScore. When a food product is given negative evaluation from NutriScore, nutrient specific interpretative labelling cancels the effect of NutriScore on perceived healthiness and purchase intention.

Previous studies have analysed the interaction between NutriScore and nutrient-specific interpretative labels, but they attribute a negative message to the product (warning labels). This study was aimed at analysing the interaction between NutriScore and summary indicators nutrient specific with positive message about the nutritional quality of the food item.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how the nutritional traffic light can reduce consumers’ intention to purchase unhealthy food by eliciting negative emotions (i.e. fear and guilt). The work also examines the moderating role of income in the above-mentioned relationships.

The empirical study was conducted in Ecuador. In an initial phase, exploratory research was carried out with two focus groups. Then a quasi-experiment was conducted with 330 participants following a 3×2 design, in which the nutritional traffic light for a dairy product (green, yellow, red) and the variable income (high and low income) were manipulated.

Traffic light colours (red, yellow and green) significantly influence consumers’ levels of fear and guilt as well as their intention to purchase. Income has also been found to have a moderating effect on the above relationships.

Further understanding of how nutritional labels influence consumer behaviour may have beneficial effects for public authorities attempting to improve citizens’ health and for society as a whole. It may also help firms that produce and market packaged foods to be aware of what type of foods new consumers want and adapt their offering in consequence.

The main contribution of this work is the analysis of the influence of the nutritional traffic light on emotions, namely, fear and guilt and how these emotions lead consumers to control their consumption of unhealthy foods. In addition, the present work proposes the moderating effect of income on the influence of colour on emotions and purchase intention.

Providing interpretative or graphical nutrition information on food labels could help consumers understand more about the nutritional content of foods and facilitate easier food choices. The EC Nutritional Labelling Directive (1990) allows for the future development of EC formats for graphic nutritional labelling – and the Government′s Food Advisory Committee has recently sought the views of interested parties on possible schemes. There has been considerable discussion on the relative merits of different interpretative schemes but this has tended to focus on scientific and legislative concerns with accuracy, rather than the needs of consumers. Argues that, to determine both the numerical basis of graphical information (the criteria) and the method in which it is conveyed (the format), further consumer research is necessary.

With dining out increasing globally, policy making and research have been on menu labeling as a source for meaningful nutrition information. Yet, despite attempts to mandate menu labeling and the studies examining consumer's perception of menu nutritional information and how this perception impacts dining behavior and intention to consume, concerns for obesity and malnutrition continue to be at the forefront of public health discussions. This study attempts to comprehend consumers' nutritional goals, intention and food choice behavior, thereby suggesting how to leverage this information for change.

Using survey data and a proposed and validated theoretical model, the study identified the different aspects of consumer's food choice by analyzing the relationship of consumer's perceived importance toward nutrition information, food choice and healthy daily behavior, and intention to improve health.

Consumers who perceive higher importance of nutrition information are more likely to choose healthy food when dining out and have stronger health improvement intention. The results also suggested healthy food choice and healthy daily behavior positively influenced health improvement intention.

Despite the previous studies on menu labeling and the numerous policy mandates, there is still concern about the food choice behavior of consumers while eating out. No serious effort exists to regulate food service providers similar to the regulation of other consumer products, whereby consumers are generally protected from harm. This study suggests through education, promotional marketing and industry partnerships, motivating and leveraging consumers' desire for healthy food choices could move food service providers and policy makers to change what information is provided.