FDA Asks Shoppers About Food Label Formats

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

FDA took to the shopping malls recently to find out what food label formats people like best and which they can use most effectively.

Food manufacturers are doing similar surveys, and FDA will use the results of both efforts in its final format design, which it is completing in conjunction with the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act.

In addition to format design, FDA has proposed requirements for the way information must be presented on food labels — for example, minimum type sizes and color contrasts.

FDA did two consumer surveys at the malls. The first was completed in 1991, and the second in 1992. The accompanying illustrations show seven format designs used in the 1992 survey.

The first survey involved 1,460 participants from eight shopping malls in different areas of the country: Pine Bluff, Ark.; Tampa, Fla.; Jackson, Miss.; Council Bluffs, Iowa; Aurora, Ill.; Rochester, N.Y.; and Buena Park and Eureka, Calif. These malls represented large and small metropolitan areas and people with a diversity of education levels. Participants were all over 18 and said they did at least half of the household's food shopping.

Five format designs with five food products were used in this survey. Participants were asked to perform tasks that could show how well the formats could be used to compare nutrient differences between like products, and to choose the format they considered most helpful and least helpful for selecting nutritious foods and planning meals.

The second survey had 1,200 participants from the same eight malls, but measured additional kinds of label uses of seven formats. Three formats were the same as those used in the first study (1 — Control; 2 — Control/DV; and 5 — Adjective). Four were added (3 and 4, both of which use percentages of Daily Values for nutrients; 6, which concerns highlighting; and 7, which concerns grouping).

Both surveys showed that formats that worked best were not the same as the formats participants said they preferred, reports Alan Levy, Ph.D., head of FDA's Consumer Research Staff. Participants in both studies indicated that they wanted a short, easy-to-read, easily interpreted food label that would provide more information than the current label. When asked to choose the format they thought would be most helpful, participants tended to select a label with the most information. But these formats, Levy says, "performed poorly compared to other formats" when the participants tried to use them.

In the second survey, FDA researchers asked participants to show that they could use labels for the following: perceiving differences between products, maintaining diets, using the daily values, rating front panel statements as true or false, and assessing a product's healthfulness. They tested the seven formats with six products — condensed soup, frozen vegetables, frozen desserts, breakfast cereal, macaroni and cheese, and cake.

Here are the tasks FDA asked participants about and the best-ranked format for each:

Perception: What are the nutrition differences between pairs of like products?

Participants used all formats except Adjective (format 5) equally well. They correctly identified an average of five and a half of a possible seven differences in nutrition content between two like products. Participants took 58 to 60 seconds to identify the differences with each of the formats except format 5, which took about 10 seconds longer.

Dietary management: If you ate three servings of this food in a day, which nutrients should you try to get more of (or cut back on) in the other foods you eat that day.

On this task, participants more often gave correct answers when they used Percent Daily Value and Percent Daily Value without DV listing (formats 3 and 4).

Using the Daily Values: How many servings of this food only would you need to get all the carbohydrates you need in a day?

Participants were more likely to get the correct answers when they used Control with DV listing in grams (format 2).

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