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Health Promotion International Advance Access originally published online on October 8, 2009
Health Promotion International 2009 24(4):344-352; doi:10.1093/heapro/dap032
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

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 Research Group, Department of Public Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK and 3WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

* Corresponding author. E-mail: gary.sacks{at}deakin.edu.au


  Abstract

Front-of-pack ‘traffic-light’ nutrition labelling has been widely proposed as a tool to improve public health nutrition. This study examined changes to consumer food purchases after the introduction of traffic-light labels with the aim of assessing the impact of the labels on the ‘healthiness’ of foods purchased. The study examined sales data from a major UK retailer in 2007. We analysed products in two categories (‘ready meals’ and sandwiches), investigating the percentage change in sales 4 weeks before and after traffic-light labels were introduced, and taking into account seasonality, product promotions and product life-cycle. We investigated whether changes in sales were related to the healthiness of products. All products that were not new and not on promotion immediately before or after the introduction of traffic-light labels were selected for the analysis (n = 6 for ready meals and n = 12 for sandwiches). For the selected ready-meals, sales increased (by 2.4% of category sales) in the 4 weeks after the introduction of traffic-light labels, whereas sales of the selected sandwiches did not change significantly. Critically, there was no association between changes in product sales and the healthiness of the products. This short-term study based on a small number of ready meals and sandwiches found that the introduction of a system of four traffic-light labels had no discernable effect on the relative healthiness of consumer purchases. Further research on the influence of nutrition signposting will be needed before this labelling format can be considered a promising public health intervention.

Key words: barriers; diabetes; exercise


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