SEARCHRCTpublic health, nutrition

RCT·public health, nutrition, clinical nutrition, epidemiology, clinical trial·PMC10343722

A Randomized Controlled Study to Test Front-of-Pack (FOP) Nutrition Labels in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Nutrients · 9 authors, 4 centres

AI SUMMARY

FIDELITY 100%

This summary was generated by AI from a single paper. It has not been reviewed by a clinician and is not clinical advice. Verify against the source before acting on it.

AGENT 01 · STRUCTURED SUMMARY

TRACE TO SOURCE

“

TL;DR

A randomized controlled study randomly assigned 656 Saudi Arabian adults to a no-label control, a modified Nutri-Score, or Chilean warning labels in an online grocery store and found that both labels improved food and beverage choices but with differential effects: Nutri-Score improved overall diet quality while warning labels were more effective at reducing energy and saturated fat per serving.

Full summary

739 CHARS

This three-arm randomized controlled study enrolled 656 Saudi Arabian adults who completed a hypothetical grocery shop in a fully functional online store. Participants were assigned to no-label control, modified Nutri-Score (NS) with a sugar percentage tag, or Chilean warning labels (WL). The primary outcome was diet quality measured by the weighted average NS point of the shopping basket. NS reduced sugar intake per serving, whereas WL reduced energy and saturated fat per serving. Neither label reduced sodium per serving. Study limitations include hypothetical rather than actual purchases, a convenience sample, no long-term follow-up, and an inability to isolate the effect of the NS sugar tag modification from the overall label.

STUDY TYPE

RCT

SPECIALTY

public health

SUMMARISED BY

AI pipeline

FIDELITY CHECK

100% · A

ORIGINAL PAPER

PMC10343722

A Randomized Controlled Study to Test Front-of-Pack (FOP) Nutrition Labels in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Nutrients

READ THE FULL PAPER

ABSTRACT

One common strategy for governments to tackle the non-communicable disease (NCD) epidemic is front-of-package (FOP) nutrition labeling. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is considering implementing a new FOP label that is based on either France’s Nutri-Score (NS), which labels all foods (A = healthiest to E = least healthy) based on overall nutritional quality, or the Chilean warning label (WL) approach, which identifies foods to avoid based on select nutritional characteristics. Using a fully functional online grocery store, this study aimed to test these two promising FOP strategies by randomizing 656 KSA adults into one of the three versions of the store to complete a hypothetical grocery shop: no-label (control), NS, and WL. The NS was modified with a sugar percentage tag given that reducing sugar consumption is one of KSA’s public health goals. We found that both modified NS labels and Chilean warning labels positively influenced food and beverage choices among KSA participants, but there were differential effects across the two labels. Relative to the control, NS improved the overall diet quality of the shopping baskets, measured by the weighted (by the number of servings) average NS point (ranging from 0, least healthy, to 55, healthiest), by 2.5 points [95% CI: 1.7, 3.4; p < 0.001], whereas results for WL were not statistically significant (0.6 points [95% CI: −0.2,1.5]). With respect to each nutritional attribute, we found that NS reduced sugar intake per serving, whereas WL was effective at decreasing energy and saturated fat intake per serving from food and beverages purchased. Our results suggest that the NS approach that identifies the healthiness of all foods using a holistic approach appears preferable if the purpose of the label is to improve overall diet quality as opposed to addressing select nutrients to avoid.

CITATION EXPORT

Soye Shin, Ada Mohammad Alqunaibet, Reem F. Alsukait et al.. A Randomized Controlled Study to Test Front-of-Pack (FOP) Nutrition Labels in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Nutrients. (2023). https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15132904

AUTHORS

9 · 4 CENTRES

Soye Shin, Ada Mohammad Alqunaibet, Reem F. Alsukait, Amaal Alruwaily, Rasha Abdulrahman Alfawaz, Abdullah Algwizani, Christopher H. Herbst, Meera Shekar, Eric A. Finkelstein

1Program in Health Services and Systems Research, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore 169857, Singapore; [email protected]
2Public Health Authority, Riyadh 11176, Saudi Arabia; [email protected] (A.M.A.); [email protected] (A.A.); [email protected] (R.A.A.); [email protected] (A.A.)
3Department of Community Health Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11362, Saudi Arabia; [email protected]
4Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice, World Bank Group, Washington, DC 20433, USA; [email protected] (C.H.H.); [email protected] (M.S.)

EDITOR / REVIEWER

Euejung Hwang