Anales del I Congreso Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sensoriales y del Consumidor

In Mexico there is an increasing concern about diabetes, obesity and other cardiovascular problems. This is the reason why the government has decided to approve some modifications to the regulation for Front-Of-Package (FOP) nutrition label in processed food and non-alcoholic beverages known as NOM-051 that will be implemented in October 2020. This regulation aims to include warning symbols to indicate high levels of sugars, saturated fats, trans fats, sodium and calories and also precautionary legends for products containing caffeine and sweeteners as an initiative to better inform people about what they are buying and promote a better nutrition.
The current study seeks to analyze the possible changes in the purchase and consumption habits before the implementation of this new regulation in México. This quantitative research was carried out through 1699 online surveys conducted by two external market research agencies in the period from January to March 2020. In general, 999 surveys were conducted by the community panel of Mom’s® Insights with a specific target of women (with at least one child or pregnant), as they are mostly the main decision-makers when it comes to buying products for their families and hold a crucial purchasing power. In addition, the other 700 surveys were collected by Mega Research agency with 51% men and 49% women and covering all the socioeconomic levels and ages in order to understand the insights for the general population.

The results indicated that around 50% of consumers are aware of this new regulation and 8 out of 10 agree for its implementation. Moreover, results showed that products with sugar warning symbols’ would be the most affected due to 80% of people declaring they would avoid products with high content of sugar, but in general the concern is equal across the other symbols and legends and the population that are most worried about are moms.

In conclusion, we found that the majority of people could possibly reduce or stop their consumption of food and beverages if the products have certain warning symbols and barriers increase when the purchase is considered for someone else.