Nutritional or commercial information? Young people’s preferences on food labels

Abstract

The question of information that are presented on food labels is a returning problem. It provides facility for the food industry to inform the customers appropriately and to meet the customers demands. Our aim was to survey the reading of food label facts and compare the normal weight the overweight and obese groups based on theirs body mass index (BMI) from this respect. This survey was made by a quantitative cross sectional study at the Civil Sziget of the Sziget Festival in several years (2005, 2007-2010), with people more than 18years old who filled in the questionnaires voluntarily. In addition, we found that advertisements have much bigger impact among overweight and obese people in purchasing a product because every fourth overweight person considered the advertisement of the given product and thought that it was important or comparatively important. We found that the commercial information (food price) was the most interesting for all the groups in the survey. The knowledge of the elements of a well-balanced diet is an indispensable part of the health prevention, it also manifest in the customers conscious food selection. For a prudent choice there is a need for adequate amount and user friendly information.