Trial reportThe international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity2021
The impact of the Nutri-Score front-of-pack nutrition label on purchasing intentions of unprocessed and processed foods: post-hoc analyses from three randomized controlled trials.
Trial report in The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Impact of Five Types of Front-of-Package Nutrition Labels on Consumer Behavior among Young Adults: A Systematic Review.Nutrients · 2024Pooled it
- Effect of food swap recommendations on the healthfulness and carbon footprint of grocery purchases in a naturalistic online store: A randomized parallel trial.PLoS medicine · 2026Trial
- Nutrition Info and Other Front-of-Package Labels and Simulated Food and Beverage Purchases: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2025Trial
- Investigation of the 1-week effect of traffic light nutrition labeling on diet selection among Japanese university students: a randomized controlled trial.BMC public health · 2024Trial
- Effects of 4 Interpretive Front-of-Package Labeling Systems on Hypothetical Beverage and Snack Selections: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2023Trial
- Trial
- Beyond Nutrient Profiling: Strengths, Limitations, and Emerging Challenges for Nutri-Score and Related Front-of-Pack Labeling Systems.Nutrients · 2026Review
- Consumer understanding, preferences and acceptance of front-of-pack labels in Thailand: foundational evidence for policy development.Public health nutrition · 2026Article
- Assessment of the influence of Nutri-Score on Polish consumer Choices - Insights from the nationwide, Cross-sectional study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The Organic Halo Effect: Perceived Caloric Disparities in High- and Low-Calorie Foods and the Role of Nutrition Label Reading Frequency.Journal of human nutrition and dietetics : the official journal of the British Dietetic Association · 2025Article
- Ten years of Nutri-Score front-of-pack nutrition labelling in Europe.Nature food · 2025Review
- The performance of Nutri-Score as a tool in guiding and evaluating nutritional quality of food procurements for high schools in Norway.Food & nutrition research · 2025Article
- The Nutri-Score Scale-A Tool for Assessing the Nutritional Quality of Processed Meat Products Available on the Polish Market.Nutrients · 2024Article
- A Little Bird Told Me… Nutri-Score Panoramas from a Flight over Europe, Connecting Science and Society.Nutrients · 2023Article
- A Diet Profiling Algorithm (DPA) to Rank Diet Quality Suitable to Implement in Digital Tools-A Test Study in a Cohort of Lactating Women.Nutrients · 2023Article
- Review
- An Evaluation of the Nutri-Score System along the Reasoning for Scientific Substantiation of Health Claims in the EU-A Narrative Review.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Mapping the nutritional value of diets across Europe according to the Nutri-Score front-of-pack label.Frontiers in nutrition · 2022Article
- Nutritional Quality and Degree of Processing of Children's Foods Assessment on the French Market.Nutrients · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe Nutri-Score summary graded front-of-pack nutrition label has been identified as an efficient tool to increase the nutritional quality of pre-packed food purchases. However, no study has been conducted to investigate the effect of the Nutri-Score on the shopping cart composition, considering the type of foods. The present paper aims to investigate the effect of the Nutri-Score on the type of food purchases, in terms of the relative contribution of unpacked and pre-packed foods, or the processing degree of foods.
methodsBetween September 2016 and April 2017, three consecutive randomized controlled trials were conducted in three specific populations - students (N = 1866), low-income individuals (N = 336) and subjects suffering from cardiometabolic diseases (N = 1180) - to investigate the effect of the Nutri-Score on purchasing intentions compared to the Reference Intakes and no label. Using these combined data, the proportion of unpacked products in the shopping carts, as well as the distribution of products across food categories taking into account the degree of processing (NOVA classification) were assessed by trials arm.
resultsThe shopping carts of participants simulating purchases with the Nutri-Score affixed on pre-packed foods contained higher proportion of unpacked products - especially raw fruits and meats, i.e. with no FoPL -, compared to participants purchasing with no label (difference of 5.93 percentage points [3.88-7.99], p-value< 0.0001) or with the Reference Intakes (difference of 5.27[3.25-7.29], p-value< 0.0001). This higher proportion was partly explained by fewer purchases of pre-packed processed and ultra-processed products overall in the Nutri-Score group.
conclusionsThese findings provide new insights on the positive effect of the Nutri-Score, which appears to decrease purchases in processed products resulting in higher proportions of unprocessed and unpacked foods, in line with public health recommendations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.