Abstract
Background: Governments and international health organizations recognize front-of-pack nutrition labeling (FoPL) as a cost-effective, population-wide public health policy tool that can contribute to healthier food environments and support efforts to prevent and control diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Despite growing evidence of a rapid nutrition transition across Africa, where NCDs account for approximately 37% of all deaths, the use of FoPL schemes as part of a comprehensive food policy framework in resource-constrained settings remains largely unexplored in the region. This study aims to evaluate consumers’ objective understanding, food choice responses, and perceptions of five different FoPL schemes in three African countries: Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
Methods: A two-stage within-subject experimental design, in which each participant serves as their own control, is being implemented. In the first stage, participants are presented with food products of varying nutritional quality, displayed without any FoPL, and asked to indicate which product they would be most likely to purchase and then rank the products according to healthiness. In the second stage, the same choice and ranking tasks are being repeated; however, participants are randomly assigned to one of five FoPLs: Health Star Rating, Multiple Traffic Lights, Nutri-Score, Warning Labels, or Reference Intake. Data collection is currently being conducted involving 6,000 adults across three countries (2,000 per country).
Results: As data collection is ongoing, results are not available at the time of abstract submission. Data collection will be completed before the conference, and the final study findings will be presented, including the extent to which the different FoPLs improve understanding of nutritional quality and influence consumers’ food choices. The results have the potential to inform FoPL policy development in these resource-constrained African settings.