Clinical trial NCT02385838: Impact of Nutrition Labels on Consumer Purchasing Intentions
Official title: Impact of Different Front-of-pack Nutrition Labels on Consumer Purchasing Intentions: Randomized Trial in the NutriNet-Santé Study
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Food Labeling
Choice Behavior
Keywords: Nutrition labelling
Front-of-pack nutrition labels
Purchasing intentions
Nutritional quality
Randomized controlled trial (RCT)
Lead sponsor: University of Paris 13
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale, France
First posted: 2015-03-11
Enrollment: 11981
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: SCREENING

Brief summary: The purpose of this interventional study is to compare the impact of four different Front-Of-Pack (FOP) nutrition labels on purchasing intentions. This study is nested in the ongoing web-based prospective observational NutriNet-Santé cohort study, including on December 2014 around 150,000 participants. The investigators will perform a five-arm randomized trial where participants will be subjected to different FOP nutrition label formats: Guidelines Daily Amount (GDA), Multiple Traffic Lights (MTL), 5-Color Nutrition Label (5-CNL), Green Tick (Tick) and a 'no label' condition. The impact of front-of-pack nutrition labels on the nutritional quality of the shopping cart will be assessed. Participants from the NutriNet-Santé cohort study will be randomly assigned to one of these five experimental conditions according to their sociodemographic characteristics.

Purchasing intentions will be assessed using an experimental web-based supermarket designed to look like a regular online grocery store. The supermarket includes 269 unique products divided into 4 categories: dairy products, processed meat/delicatessen, savory and breakfast/sugary products. Each category is then separated into specific products families like yogurt, milk, cheese, etc. for the dairy products category. Inside a food family, the selection of foodstuffs will be made to obtain a representative sample of the products commonly sold in French supermarket. For each type of products, at least two variants are proposed. Products are retailers or manufacturers branded. Categories of products that are not usually bought each week, or which are likely to be bought from different sources are not included on the web-based supermarket.

Participants are asked to simulate a shopping situation: they have to select a week worth of food for their family among proposed products. If the user is not able to find a product he/she usually buy, the instruction is to select similar product among proposed ones.

Information provided for each product is: name, price and the picture with the FOP label/or not according to the experimental condition to which the participant is allocated. A brief explanation of the FOP label used is also given.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Being a participant of the NutriNet-Santé cohort study
* Completing the preliminary questionnaire about nutrition knowledge and purchasing habits
* Completing online shopping in the experimental supermarket

Exclusion Criteria:

* Not going shopping usually
* Having a difference greater than 400€ between the price of their shopping cart versus their usual weekly shopping cart budget
* Having aberrant body mass index (i.e. \>55 or \<11 for women and \<13 for men)

Primary outcomes:
measure: Overall nutritional quality of the shopping cart
timeFrame: up to 27 weeks
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Caloric value of the shopping cart
timeFrame: up to 27 weeks
measure: Nutrients content of the shopping cart
timeFrame: up to 27 weeks
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Bobigny
country: France
facility: Equipe de Recherche en Epidémiologie Nutritionnelle
Study officials:
affiliation: EREN
name: Serge Hercberg, Pr
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Ducrot P, Julia C, Mejean C, Kesse-Guyot E, Touvier M, Fezeu LK, Hercberg S, Peneau S. Impact of Different Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labels on Consumer Purchasing Intentions: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Am J Prev Med. 2016 May;50(5):627-636. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2015.10.020. Epub 2015 Dec 15.