THE QUICKER THE BETTER: A COMPARISON OF FRONT-OF-PACK NUTRITION LABELLING SCHEMES BASED ON RESPONSE TIMES

Front-of-pack nutrition labelling has been identified as one of the strategies that could promote healthier dietary patterns and contribute to cope with the global epidemic of obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Several schemes have been developed worldwide but nutritional warnings highlighting products with high content of nutrients associated with NCDs are gaining relevance in Americas, which makes it necessary to compare their efficacy. In this context, the aim of the present work was to compare five nutritional warnings (black and red magnifier, black octagon, black triangle and red circle) that are being considered by Brazilian national authorities for implementing in the country, with two of the most studied schemes (the guidelines daily amounts (GDA) and the traffic-light system) in terms of their attentional capture. Fictitious labels of eight product categories frequently consumed in Brazil were considered: sponge cake, orange nectar, frozen lasagna, cereal bar, breakfast cereal, chocolate flavoured milk, yogurt and savoury snack. Visual search was conducted with 62 participants to evaluate the time needed to identify the presence of the schemes, as well as whether a product had high nutrient content. The schemes significantly (p<0.001) differed in the time needed by participants to identify the presence of them on the labels, and to correctly identify the high content of nutrients associated with NCDs. GDA showed the longest reaction times for the two tasks. The rest of the FOP nutrition labelling schemes did not largely differ. However, those including familiar warning symbols in black color, i.e. the black octagon and triangle showed the shortest response times. The results confirmed the advantages of nutritional warnings compared to the GDA and the traffic-light system to facilitate the identification of products with high content of nutrients associated with NCDs and provide evidence of the advantages of using familiar symbols as warning signs.