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Impact of front-of-pack ‘traffic-light’ nutrition labelling on consumer food purchases in the UK
GARY SACKS1,*, MIKE RAYNER2 and BOYD SWINBURN3
1School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences and 2British Heart Foundation Health Promotion ResearchGroup, Department of Public Health, University 代写英国硕士论文of Oxford, Oxford, UK and 3WHO Collaborating
Centre for Obesity Prevention, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
*Corresponding author. E-mail: gary.sacks@deakin.edu.au
SUMMARY
Front-of-pack ‘traffic-light’ nutrition labelling has beenwidely proposed as a tool to improve public health nutrition.
This study examined changes to consumer food purchasesafter the introduction of traffic-light labels with theaim of assessing the impact of the labels on the ‘healthiness’
of foods purchased. The study examined sales datafrom a major UK retailer in 2007. We analysed products
in two categories (‘ready meals’ and sandwiches), investigatingthe percentage change in sales 4 weeks before and
after traffic-light labels were introduced, and taking intoaccount seasonality, product promotions and product lifecycle.We investigated whether changes in sales were
related to the healthiness of products. All products thatwere not new and not on promotion immediately before
or after the introduction of traffic-light labels were selectedfor the analysis (n ¼ 6 for ready meals and n ¼ 12 forsandwiches). For the selected ready-meals, sales increased(by 2.4% of category sales) in the 4 weeks after the introductionof traffic-light labels, whereas sales of the selectedsandwiches did not change significantly. Critically, therewas no association between changes in product sales andthe healthiness of the products. This short-term studybased on a small number of ready meals and sandwichesfound that the introduction of a system of four traffic-light
labels had no discernable effect on the relative healthinessof consumer purchases. Further research on the influenceof nutrition signposting will be needed before this labelling
format can be considered a promising public healthintervention.

Key words: barriers; diabetes; exercise

INTRODUCTION
The health burden from nutrition-related noncommunicablediseases such as diabetes, cancerand cardiovascular disease is high and increasingin many countries around the world (Lopez
et al., 2006). Accordingly, governments areactively seeking policy options aimed at improving
public health nutrition (World HealthOrganization, 2005). New forms of food labelling,
and ‘front-of-pack’ nutrient signposting inparticular, are viewed as potential tools forimproving the nutrition of the population
(Nestle and Jacobson, 2000). A number ofdifferent front-of-pack nutrient signposting have
been developed (Grunert and Wills, 2007) andthe most effective format has been vigorouslydebated (Lobstein et al., 2007).
A recent review of European research onconsumer responses to front-of-pack labellingfound that, while there are many studies intoconsumer preferences regarding front-of-packlabels, there is very little evidence and anurgent need for research into consumer use offront-of-pack nutrition information in a realworldsetting (Grunert and Wills, 2007).Supermarket sales data have great potential to
be used as a tool to monitor and assess theHealth Promotion International, Vol. 24 No. 4doi:10.1093/heapro/dap032
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