Does Reducing Nutritional Information Complexity Promote Healthier Food Choices?

The Nutritional Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) was one of the biggest efforts by policy makers to promote healthy eating among Americans. Unfortunately, it has failed to curb the obesity epidemic, so policy makers and marketers are seeking new ways to impact consumers’ dietary decisions. A recent trend among food retailers is to implement in-store nutrition scoring systems that communicate the nutritional value of foods in a simplified manner (e.g., Guiding Stars, NuVal). Our research examines whether facilitating the understanding of nutritional information through such nutrition scoring systems at the point of purchase helps consumers make healthier food choices. Past research demonstrates that the complexity of understanding nutritional information has impeded consumers from making smarter food choices. Cohn et al. (2012) report that point-of-purchase calorie postings in restaurants are not effective in encouraging consumers to embrace healthier eating because consumers find it difficult to comprehend and use the provided information. This suggests that in order for nutritional information to be incorporated into consumers’ decisions, it does not have to be only available at the point of purchase but also easily “processable” (Bettman 1975; Russo 1975). Russo et al. (1986) argue that consumers face three types of costs in incorporating nutritional information into their food decisions: collection costs (time and efforts to acquire the information), computation costs (efforts in combining the gathered information into an overall evaluation), and comprehension costs (efforts to understand the nutritional information). Reducing all three costs leads to greater reliance on products’ nutritional content in making food choices (Russo et al. 1986).