engleski

Is nutrition label used as a weight control behaviour?

The goal of nutrition information is to help consumers make informed, healthful choices. In the light of increasing global rates of overweight and obesity in recent years, the use and understanding of nutrition information on food labels could be a dietary tool which could help to maintain healthy weight. The present study investigated whether individuals, who practice some kind of weight-related action, use nutrition labels more frequently, and which part of the label they consider important, compared with counterparts who do not undertake weight-related actions. A total of 200 participants (50% males and 50% females) were recruited using purposive convenience sampling. The results revealed that 166 participants (79 females and 87 males) confirmed they take some actions with the aim to control weight. Among the group practising weight control, 35.6 % read nutrition labels always or often (frequent label users), while 64.5% could be considered as non-frequent label users (never, rarely or sometimes read nutrition labels). The group of frequent label users considered the sugar content in food as the most important information (35.5%), followed by energy (31.3%), fat (28.3%), saturated fat (28.3%), cholesterol (28.3%), protein (24.1%) and fibre (22.9%). As the least important they considered the amount of sodium. As a weight loss strategy, about 22.3% of participants combined nutrition label use with vigorous physical activity, while 35.5% used only the nutrition label but did not engage in physical activity. Among participants who try to control their weight the strongest predictor for nutrition label use was education (OR=3.16 ; p<0.001) followed by female gender (OR=2.20 ; p=0.001), the youngest group (18-29 years) (OR=1.51 ; p=0.001) and physical inactivity (OR=1.51 ; p=0.045).

nutrition label ; body weight ; consumer

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