The list of ingredients as nutrition and health information in food labeling studies: a scoping review
Creators: name: Uggioni, Paula Lazzarin
name: Kraemer, Mariana
name: Chaddad, Maria Cecília Cury
name: Da Costa Proença, Rossana Pacheco
name: Greyce Luci Bernardo
name: Fernandes, Ana Carolina
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Public Health
subject: Nutrition
subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
subject: Life Sciences
subject: Food Science
subject: Food policy
subject: Nutrient profile
subject: Nutrition facts
subject: Nutritional composition
subject: Nutritional quality
subject: Public health

description: Global dietary patterns data have shown increased consumption of packaged foods, especially ultra-processed products (Popkin and Ng, 2022). Excessive intake of these products has been associated with the development of non-communicable diseases and other adverse health outcomes, especially cardiometabolic, common mental disorder, and mortality outcomes (Lane et al., 2024).
Food labelling enables consumers to assess relevant information for nutrition and health in packaged foods through mandatory components of food labelling, especially the nutrition labelling and the list of ingredients (FAO/ WHO, 2018). Nutrition labelling is any description intended to inform consumers about the nutritional properties of a packaged food, including the nutrient declaration and supplementary nutrition information, such as nutrition claims (FAO/WHO, 2021). The list of ingredients is a food labelling component that allows consumers to gain an overview of the proportion of each ingredient, as it should be listed in descending order of quantity (FAO/ WHO, 2018).
Food labelling and nutrition labelling fulfil complementary albeit distinct roles, given that their underlying premises are different. Both have the function of informing consumers about the characteristics of packaged foods. However, food labelling provides general information about the food product, its commercialization, and composition and manufacturing standardization (FAO/WHO 2018). Nutrition labelling, as a current concept, aims to assist consumers in their food choices and encourage the use of healthy principles in food formulation to promote public health (FAO/WHO 2021). Despite the nutrition labelling aims, the list of ingredients is not included in its scope (FAO/WHO 2021).
A previous study that discussed the role of the list of ingredients as a source of health and nutrition information in food labelling through the analysis of meeting reports of the Codex Committee on Food Labelling, highlights the understood of the Committee in several meetings that information on the quantity of nutrients does not sufficiently encompass all nutrition and health aspects that should be informed to the consumer. The author also stated that the scientific advances in food and nutrition have shown the need to debate the role of the list of ingredients from a more comprehensive perspective of health and nutrition (Kraemer et al., 2023).
Considering this perspective, it is hypothesised that the list of ingredients is being used by researchers to analyse data on food labelling with a health and nutrition perspective. Nonetheless, it was not identified review articles addressing this scenario. Therefore, this study aimed to discuss the role of the list of ingredients as a source of health and nutrition information in food labelling studies.