As American food companies begin to add the GMA Facts Up Front to their food packaging, a new European study shows this will not encourage consumers to make healthier food choices.

Front-of-pack nutritional information, in any format, has a very limited impact on the way consumers choose products in a retail setting, according to new data.

The research, published in Appetite, examines whether front-of-pack nutrition label formats influence the healthiness of consumers' food choices using data from 1,000 German and Polish consumers. The international research team behind the study report that the type of front-of-pack nutrition labelling format had very little influence on consumers' motivation to choose healthy foods.

"The study indicates that the implementation of nutrition labels per se, and the interpretative elements (i.e., colour coding, text and percentage of GDAs) on them, does not influence the healthfulness of consumers' choice when they choose according to their preference," explained the research team, led by Jessica Aschemann-Witzel from Aarhus University, Denmark.

Read more from the source: FoodNavigator.com