Food label boredom?
August 15, 2008
The USDA has just come out with a new study documenting declining use of the Nutrition Facts labels, especially among adults too young to have known anything about them when they first came out in the early 1990s. Now that trans fats are zeros, the only thing people look at these days are fiber and sugar. To this one-track mind, this is another reason why calorie labeling is a good idea. Why don’t people look at calories on package labels? I’m guessing because they get confused by the serving size. About five years ago, the FDA proposed a way to make calories more prominent but nothing ever came of it (too much opposition). I still have hopes.
Perhaps I don’t count as young anymore (I’m almost 36), but I do read the labels! I use them for calories, fat, sugar, dietary fiber, and sodium. Of course, perhaps the type of person who subscribes to Marion Nestle’s blog in her RSS reader isn’t the general type of person that the study interviewed.
Comment by Stacey K. — August 16, 2008 @ 8:27 am
There’s a blog (google for ‘nudge blog’) that connects with a lot of what you write here, based on a book called “Nudge” by a law professor and an economics professor at the University of Chicago (well, the lawprof is now at Harvard).
The two scholars are famous for their uses of what’s called “behavioral economics,” namely the study of how humans actually *do* act rather than how they *should* act.
The reason I bring it up here is that a lot of what they write about is making it easier for people to make the right decision — where “right” means “right by the people’s own standard.” One important strand of this is giving people the right kind of information about what they’re doing right now: what’s the best single-number summary of the food they’re eating or the fuel they’re using in their car at this very moment?
Anyway, it seems like there’s a very fertile crossover between the work that Prof. Nestle does and the work that Profs. Thaler and Sunstein (the Nudge guys) do. I for one would love to see some collaboration there.’
Comment by Steve Laniel — August 16, 2008 @ 12:13 pm
I try not to buy foods with labels on them. Hopefully that is the reason for the trend….
Comment by darya — August 16, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
I can see people having issues with “calories” too… a 384 g can of diced tomatoes says it has “about 3.5 servings” at 121 g apiece… The same sort of issues pop up on less-healthy foods such as chips (for example 1.75 oz bags of chips, the backs marked for 1 oz servings, and most people eat the whole bag at one sitting).
Personally, I’m interested in both the nutrition information label and the ingredients label. I’m pretty sure there have been nutrition labels ever since I can remember checking, and that’s going back to the early 1970’s…
Comment by tmana — August 17, 2008 @ 12:41 am
I thought the label was more useful when it listed how many grams of a nutrient was in a serving, like 60 mg. vitamin C or 300 mg. calcium, instead of % of Daily Value. People are always asking me “What’s a Daily Value?”
Comment by Bix — August 17, 2008 @ 5:45 am
[…] Nutritional labelling on food items is useless unless the customer actually reads it. […]
Pingback by Taste T.O. - Food & Drink In Toronto » Food For Thought - Monday, August 18th — August 18, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
I really like the european system, where the values are noted per serving, and then per 100g, so you can get an idea of the calorie density.
I agree that it is a shame that people dont look at calories.
Comment by Jenny — August 26, 2008 @ 11:35 am