Nutritional and economic impact of five alternative front-of-pack nutritional labels: experimental evidence

Paolo Crosetto (1, 2) , Anne Lacroix (1, 2) , Laurent Muller (1, 2) , Bernard Ruffieux (1, 3)

1 GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble
2 INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
3 Grenoble INP ENSGI - École nationale supérieure de génie industriel

An incentivised laboratory framed field experiment with 691 subjects examined the impact of five front-of-pack labels (Multiple Traffic Lights; Reference Intakes; HealthStarRating; NutriScore and Système d’Etiquetage Nutritionnel Simplifié) on food shopping within a catalogue of 290 products. Using difference-in-difference, we estimate the between-label variability of within-subject changes in the shopping’s Food and Standards Agency aggregated nutritional score. All labels improve the nutritional quality (−1.56 FSA points on average). NutriScore is the most effective (−2.65), followed by HealthStarRating (−1.86). Behaviourally, subjects react mostly to the extreme values of the labels and not to intermediate values. Nutritional gains are not correlated with higher expenditure.

Domaines: Economies et finances; Alimentation et Nutrition

Paolo Crosetto, Anne Lacroix, Laurent Muller, Bernard Ruffieux. Nutritional and economic impact of five alternative front-of-pack nutritional labels: experimental evidence. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 2019, Advance Article (August), pp.1-34. ⟨10.1093/erae/jbz037⟩. ⟨hal-02269574⟩