Nutrition Labelling Chaos: How Far Shall We Go in Nudging Consumers?

The role that the EU may or should play to ensure that the food we consume keeps us healthy and fit is not very clear: does EU Food Law protect consumers’ health, in addition to consumers’ safety? Food labels focusing on nutrition are a fundamental instrument to promote healthy food before consumers. In particular, new graphical approaches to nutrition labelling aim to increase the ability of consumers to see, read, interpret and act upon the nutritional information provided on the package. An example is the recent and much discussed Traffic Light Labelling adopted in the United Kingdom. These schemes are therefore scientifically questionable because they establish a distinction between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ foods, and they may affect the internal free market, consumer’s choice and the priceless value of European food cultures. Our conclusion underlines that labelling schemes are becoming different: some labels allow people to be better informed while some emerging schemes, like the Traffic Light Labelling, are different because they emotionally nudge consumers towards some type of food and away from others. In this respect, given the uncertain compliance with EU and international law, we note that a nudge consisting in ‘playing with people emotions’ by expressing through colors a judgment on food, without taking into consideration the quantities of that food consumed and the lifestyle of the consumer, is not convincing.