Nudging Healthy Choices in Food Search Through Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labels

Abstract

Front-of-pack nutrition labels have been developed to help consumers make healthier food choices when shopping for groceries in supermarkets by making it easier to judge the healthiness of food products. The two most promising front-of-pack nutrition labels are the Multiple Traffic Lights label and the Nutri-Score label. Drawing upon research on front-of-pack nutrition labels and nudges, this thesis investigates whether healthy food choices can be supported in food search by depicting front-of-pack nutrition labels on the recipe card, as well as by re-ranking search results on health. We created a prototype and asked 728 users to search for recipes using predefined keywords and to select the recipes they liked the most. Our analyses revealed that users tended to choose a healthier recipe if either a Multiple Traffic Light or Nutri-Score label was depicted on the recipe card, relative to a no-label control. In addition to this, front-of-pack nutrition labels did not negatively impact user evaluation aspects such as choice satisfaction and choice difficulty. Furthermore, re-ranking recipes using a simple health ranking did not affect the healthiness of the chosen recipes.