Label to Table: New Insight into Supermarket Labeling
- National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Project Summary
This project is one the most comprehensive, real-world evaluations of nutrition labeling policies and programs in the United States. Several important nutrition labeling policies have emerged over the last two decades, including mandatory calorie labeling on menus and food tags for prepared foods sold in chain restaurant and other food establishments, an alteration to the long-standing mandatory Nutrition Facts Label on packaged foods and beverages, voluntary shelf-tag labeling programs that provide summary information about food and beverages sold in supermarkets, and the recently-proposal mandatory front-of-package labeling on packaged foods.
Project Details
This project has provided important foundational results on the real-world effectiveness of calorie labeling in restaurants and supermarkets. Among 104 restaurants that are part of a national chain, calorie labeling was associated with a 5% reduction in calorie content of purchases. In 173 supermarkets of a large regional chain in the Northeast United States, calorie labeling of prepared food was associated with a 5% decline in calories purchased of fresh bakery items, a 11% decline in calories purchased of deli items, and no change in calories for entrees. These policies also were determined to be cost effective, and in many cases cost saving. These results have provided important information for other countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, as they have developed similar calorie labeling policies. Ongoing work is examining newer policies and programs, including the 2016 Nutrition Facts Label, the 2021 implementation of a new version of the comprehensive Guiding Stars system, and the new front-of-package labels proposed by the US Food and Drug Administration.