Background:

A front-of-package nutrition label is a tool to help guide food selection towards a balanced and healthy diet.

Objective:

To understand the model of front-of-package nutrition label that most influences the understanding of calories and important nutrients in processed food products in adult participants in Lima, Peru.

Materials and Methods:

A quasi-experimental cross-sectional study with 384 participant adults of both sexes. Participants were distributed into four equal groups: no nutritional labeling; daily food guide; stop sign warning labeling; and daily food guide with a traffic light symbol. Each participant was given a questionnaire with 10 pictures of food packaging with the labeling model that corresponded to their randomized group, along with 10 additional questions, for a total of 20 possible questionnaire points. Points were given for correct answers to the 20 questions on the questionnaire, such as identifying correctly the number of calories and/or critical nutrients.

Results:

The highest total scores were for the daily food guide-traffic light group (12.1 ± 3.9) and daily food guide group (12.1 ± 3.7), with significant differences with respect to the other two groups. There were also differences in the scores of the identification of calories, saturated fat, and total fat; the highest values were for the same two groups indicated above (p <0.05). No differences in food labels were found for the identification of sugars or sodium.

Conclusions:

The daily food guide and daily food guide-traffic light models most influence the identification of calories and critical nutrients.

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