The impact of front-of-pack nutrition labels on consumer product evaluation and choice: an experimental study.

OBJECTIVE: The present research was an experimental test that aimed to quantify the impact of two dominant front-of-pack (FOP) nutritional label formats on consumer evaluations of food products that carried them. The two FOP label types tested were the traffic light label and the Percentage Daily Intake. DESIGN: A 4×5 partially replicated Latin square design was used that allowed the impact of the FOP labels to be isolated from the effects of the product and the consumers who were performing the evaluations. SETTING: The experiment was conducted on campus at the University of Otago, New Zealand. SUBJECTS: The participants were 250 university students selected at random who met qualifying criteria of independent living and regular purchase of the products used in the research. They were not aware of the purpose of the research. RESULTS: The presence of FOP labels led to significant and positive changes in consumer purchase intentions towards the products that carried them. These changes were not affected by the nature of FOP labels used, their size or the product nutritional status (good/bad) that they were reporting. CONCLUSIONS: The result is consistent with the participants paying attention to the FOP label and then using it as an adimensional cue indicating product desirability. As such, it represents a complete functional failure of both of these FOP label types in this specific instance. This result supports calls for further research on the performance of these FOP labels before any move to compulsory deployment is made.

What Motivates Men to Improve Their Health? Understanding the Roles of Self-Esteem and Influential Others in Behaviour Change.

The aim of this study was to examine men's body image confidence, social reflectivity, body image perceptions and external information sources influence regarding body assessments. Data were collected via a cross-sectional survey and found that men have a low motivation toward physical health behaviour changes such as food, alcohol and exercise evaluation, and have generally positive views of their bodies overall. Relationship status, rather than age, defined behavioural and attitudinal differences within the men studied here. Men in this study were largely uninfluenced by celebrities or fashion in developing their own body image perceptions; single males were more likely to turn to friends, the female population generally and societal norms when evaluating themselves. Males in relationships however, weighted their partner's opinion as the greatest influence, followed by their involvement in sport. This study offers an insight into the role of body confidence in male perspectives of the self, which is important for its intrinsic connection to motivations for health behaviours such as body weight management. This has implications for increasing the effectiveness of health-related product and service messaging, and public health messages regarding body weight management for men.

Food neophobia, food choice and the details of cultured meat acceptance.

This study focuses on the details of consumer response to lab grown 'cultured meat (CM)', compared to meat derived from insects, plants and animals. A sample of 254 New Zealanders were interviewed. A word association exercise revealed that consumer reaction to CM was dominated by affective, rather than cognitive factors. The linkages between a general food neophobia scale, a specific CM evaluation scale and purchase intent were studied. The general neophobia scale performed poorly as a predictor, while the 19-point CM evaluation scale performed well. Reducing this scale to its seven affective components, and then to just the two key affective components did not significantly reduce the scale's predictive performance. Overall, the results of this research reveal very significant differences in preference for meat products based upon their origins. Insect protein was strongly disfavoured over all alternatives, while cultured meat was significantly disfavoured compared to more established alternatives. The implications of this for the commercialisation of CM are discussed.