Evaluating Human Processing of Front of Pack Nutritional Labels

描述（由申请人提供）：肥胖与死亡率、发病率和医疗费用增加有关。通过改变人们的食物选择来遏制肥胖的流行将带来巨大的健康和经济效益。长期以来，人们一直认为，促进健康饮食的一种方式是在产品包装上以营养成分面板（NFP）的形式向消费者提供营养信息。对这种方法有效性的研究表明，当人们处理信息时，传统的NFP标签在促进健康食品选择方面是有效的，但很少有人关注、编码和理解传统NFP标签中呈现的信息。为了增加营养标签的积极影响，人们一直在推动采用面板前（FOP）营养标签。这些FOP标签在包装前部或主要显示面板上提供有关几种关键营养素的信息，并包括小文字，图标和/或颜色系统的组合，旨在快速吸引消费者的注意力。虽然这种方法直观上很吸引人，但很少有客观的实验支持来验证FOP标签会导致更多的关注和处理营养信息。此外，在这些FOPs中呈现信息的格式并没有基于关于注意力和认知加工的基础研究。我们的建议将视觉认知的基础研究应用于设计一种新的FOP格式，该格式经过优化以吸引注意力，并且需要很少的认知资源来编码、理解和使用。传统上用于注意力和视觉认知基础研究的经验方法（如眼球追踪、变化检测和偶然记忆任务）被用来评估不同的FOP设计如何吸引人们对营养信息的注意，诱导信息编码进入记忆，并促进快速的跨产品营养比较。以这种方式优化配送形式应该会产生一个标签，成功地将营养信息传达给更多的人群，从而使更多的人能够做出健康的饮食决定，最终降低肥胖率。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Obesity is associated with increased mortality, morbidity, and increased health care costs. Curbing the obesity epidemic by altering people's food choices would have substantial health and economic benefit. It has long been believed that one way to promote healthy eating is to provide consumers with nutritional information in the form of a nutrition facts panel (NFP) displayed on product packaging. Research on the effectiveness of this approach suggests that the traditional NFP labels are effective in promoting healthy food choices when people process the information, but that too few people attend to, encode and understand the information presented in traditional NFP labels. In an attempt to increase the positive impact of nutritional labeling, there has been a push to adopt front of panel (FOP) nutritional labels. These FOP labels present information about a few key nutrients on the front of the package, or Principle Display Panel, and include a combination of small text, icon, and/or color systems that are designed to quickly capture the attention of the consumer. Although this approach is intuitively appealing, there is little objective, experimental support validating that FOP labels result in more attention to and processing of nutritional information. Additionally, the format for presenting information in these FOPs has not been based on basic research about attention and cognitive processing. Our proposal applies basic research on visual cognition to the design of a novel FOP format that is optimized to capture attention and will require few cognitive resources to encode, comprehend, and use. Empirical methods traditionally used in basic research on attention and visual cognition (e.g., eye-tracking, change detection, and incidental memory tasks) are used to evaluate how well different FOP designs attract attention to nutritional information, induce encoding of information into memory, and facilitate rapid, cross-product nutritional comparisons. Optimizing the delivery format in this way should produce a label that successfully communicates nutritional information to a greater segment of the population, thereby empowering more people to make healthful dietary decisions, ultimately reducing obesity rates. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposal applies basic research on visual attention and cognition to the design and evaluation of effective techniques for presenting nutritional information on food packages. An optimal label will attract attention to itself and communicate substantial nutritional information with little cognitive effort. A label that effectively accomplishes these goals will empower people to make more healthy dietary decisions, thereby reducing obesity rates.