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Simplifying food labels with EUFIC’s interactive tool

The European Food Information Council (EUFIC) hopes to turn consumer confusion into clarity with its new interactive online resource for healthier food and beverage choices.

EUFIC, a non-profit organisation focused on making science-backed food and health information accessible and understandable to the public, launched an interactive online tool to help consumers decode food labels in October this year.

Interactive fridge lets users explore and understand dietary staple labels

The tool features an interactive online format suitable for children and adults alike. Users are shown a click-to-reveal fridge, which, once open, is full of various dietary staples purchased at the supermarket: ready-to-eat plant-based spaghetti bolognese; fresh whole-wheat pasta; a packet of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese; strawberry-flavoured Greek yoghurt; smoked salmon; and a carton of eggs.

Users are invited to explore the six products, which provide detailed product information once clicked on. The spaghetti bolognese, for example, includes a Nutri-Score label, a traffic light scheme (used in the UK), a “use by” label, and a vegan label. Clicking on each label reveals an explanation of what it means and why it is featured on the product.

Once users have clicked through all six items and the varying labels on each product, they are invited to take a 15-question quiz to test their knowledge and receive a “special prize” if all questions are answered correctly.

Confusion around labels can lead to poor nutritional choices

Consumers can often make poor food and beverage choices, not as a result of intentionally choosing less healthy options, but because nutrition labels can be difficult to understand.

A May 2024 study, published in the International Journal of Public Health and Medical Research, explored the impact of food nutrition labels on consumer behaviour. The researchers found that while accurate labels assist in consumer understanding of the nutritional content of the food, misleading labels often lead consumers to make less healthy choices. The authors called for clearer, more accurate, and more readable labels, alongside increased consumer education to encourage informed dietary decisions.

This study’s findings are not new. Many consumers, governments worldwide, and non-profit organisations have been calling on nutrition labelling clarity for years.

EU label confusion linked to 8.8m tonnes of food waste

With its new interactive tool, EUFIC aims to demystify consumer confusion around product labels by making nutrition information accessible, interactive, and easy to understand.

Carlos Abundancia, outreach area lead at EUFIC told Ingredients Network that the most common misunderstanding on food labels is the on-date labelling. “It’s been estimated that up to 10% of the 88 million tonnes of food waste that is generated in the EU every year are somehow linked to date labelling, for example, because of poor legibility or misinterpretation of the meaning of the use by and best before dates,” Abundancia explained.

The nutritional information on the label is also often misinterpreted by consumers. Barriers to understanding these labels include time constraints, lack of basic knowledge about how to interpret the information presented to them, and lack of interest in reading them, Abundancia added.

“We aim to help people overcome these barriers by making the process of learning about how to read food labels more fun and appealing via [an] interactive educational resource that breaks the information down into manageable chunks,” he continued.

Interactive tool can be easily embedded into websites as a learning resource

The tool is available English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, ensuring its accessibility to a broader European audience. The tool itself can also be embedded into a website via an iframe code (a piece of HTML code that can pull a frame from one website and place it on another).

To reach consumers with the tool EUFIC’s approach is two-fold. “First, we target consumers directly by using this resource in educational and awareness campaigns covering topics such as reading nutrition labels, food science, food literacy, healthy eating habits, and whole grains,” Abundancia explained.

The second focus targets and supports educators and educator networks through the provision of classroom materials via Genially, an interactive visual communication platform. “This provides teachers with ready-to-use resources to effectively teach these valuable skills,” he added.

As EUFIC’s tool can be easily integrated into websites, it could prove to be a useful resource for brands within the food industry interested in enhancing transparency around product labels and nutrition literacy.

EUFIC looks to expand tool to other product categories

Looking to the future EUFIC hopes to keep evolving the tool, rather than it being a one-off resource.

Abundancia explained that EUFIC is considering expanding the tool to cover new food categories, such as beverages. “Additionally, we’ll stay updated on EU regulations to ensure the tool reflects the latest standards,” he said, noting that the tool focuses on EU-wide regulations, rather than national regulation, so users can rely on it for a broad, Europe-wide perspective.