In the UK scheme, each colour and nutrient has its own thresholds. Sri Lanka have recently announced that they plan to introduce a voluntary traffic light scheme to label sugar content in beverages.

Other countries that have introduced traffic light nutrition labelling schemes include Ecuador and South Korea. This system is often referred to as ‘traffic light labelling’, due to the red, amber and green colours used to represent low, medium and high amounts of each nutrient. In the UK, a government-approved voluntary scheme for FOP nutrition labelling involves using colour-coded labels to indicate ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’ levels of total fat, saturated fat, total sugar and salt. However, some consumers have difficulty understanding traditional back-of-pack nutrient declarations and it has been suggested that supplementing the back-of-pack nutrition information table with a front- of-pack (FOP) label may be more effective in encouraging consumers to choose healthier foods when shopping. Research has shown that consumers who read nutrition labelling have a healthier diet and that labels can help with weight loss.

The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that nutrition labelling plays an important role in improving health by informing consumers of the nutritional quality of the foods they consume. This could influence decisions about food reformulation and guidance on using nutrition labelling.Ī healthy diet can protect against a number of non-communicable diseases including cardiovascular diseases and some cancers. We found that participants were more concerned with avoiding reds than choosing greens, and that saturated fat and salt had a greater influence on decisions regarding healthiness than total fat and sugar. Results were broadly similar for different genders and age groups. Foods with better colours on saturated fat and salt were 7.3 (6.7, 8.0) and 7.1 (6.5, 7.8) times more likely to be chosen as healthy – significantly greater than for total fat (odds ratio 4.8 (4.4, 5.3)) and sugar (5.2 (4.7, 5.6)). ResultsĪ food with more reds was 11.4 (95 % confidence intervals: 10.3, 12.5) times less likely to be chosen as healthy, whereas a food with more greens was 6.1 (5.6, 6.6) times more likely to be chosen as healthy. We analysed data using multilevel logisitic models with food choices ( n = 3321) nested in individuals ( n = 187) as the unit of analysis. We recruited participants from a UK supermarket chain membership list to conduct an online choice experiment in May 2014. Our research questions were: Which of the four nutrients on UK traffic light labels (total fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt) has the most influence on decisions? Do green lights or red lights have a greater influence? Are there age and gender differences in how people use the colour and nutrient information? Methods It is not clear how consumers use these labels to make a single decision about the relative healthiness of foods. The voluntary scheme is used by all the major retailers and some manufacturers.

Colour coded front-of-pack nutrition labelling (‘traffic light labelling’) has been recommended for use in the UK since 2006.

Amberlight experimental