Research
Original Research
No Fat, No Sugar, No Salt . . . No Problem? Prevalence of “Low-Content” Nutrient Claims and Their Associations with the Nutritional Profile of Food and Beverage Purchases in the United States

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2017.01.011Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Nutrient claims are a commonly used marketing tactic, but the association between claims and nutritional quality of products is unknown. The objective of this study was to examine trends in the proportion of packaged food and beverage purchases with a nutrient claim, whether claims are associated with improved nutritional profile, and whether the proportion of purchases with claims differs by race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status.

Methods

This cross-sectional study examined nutrient claims on more than 80 million food and beverage purchases from a transaction-level database of 40,000 US households from 2008 to 2012. χ2 Tests were used to examine whether the proportion of purchases with a low/no-content claim changed over time or differed by race/ethnicity or household socioeconomic status. Pooled transactions were examined using t-tests to compare products’ nutritional profiles overall and by food and beverage group.

Results

Thirteen percent of food and 35% of beverage purchases had a low-content claim. Prevalence of claims among purchases did not change over time. Low-fat claims were most prevalent for both foods and beverages (10% and 19%, respectively), followed by low-calorie (3% and 9%), low-sugar (2% and 8%), and low-sodium (2% for both) claims. Compared to purchases with no claim, purchases with any low-content claim had lower mean energy, total sugar, total fat, and sodium densities. However, the association between particular claim types and specific nutrient densities varied substantially, and purchases featuring a given low-content claim did not necessarily offer better overall nutritional profiles or better profiles for the claimed nutrient, relative to products without claims. In addition, there was substantial heterogeneity in associations between claims and nutrient densities within food and beverage groups.

Conclusions

Variations in nutrient density by claim type and food and beverage group suggests that claims may have differential utility for certain foods or nutrients and, in some cases, may mislead about the overall nutritional quality of the food.

Section snippets

Methods

This study uses a commercial dataset of household food purchases from the IRI (Information Resources, Inc) Consumer Network panel.14 This consists of data from households with children and adolescents aged 2 to 18 years and their household food purchases from 2008 to 2012.15 Participants use a handheld scanner to scan barcodes on all packaged foods and beverages purchased. Information gathered for each purchase includes volume, price, retailer, and date of purchase. For random-weight and loose

Overall Trends

There was no significant change in the proportion of purchases with any type of low/no-nutrient claim from 2008 to 2012 for foods or beverages (Figure 2). In 2012, 13% of food purchases had any low/no-nutrient claim, with low-fat being the most prevalent at 10%. Also in 2012, 35% of RTD beverages had a low/no-nutrient claim, with the most prevalent being low-fat (19%) as well, followed by low-calorie (9%) and low-sugar (8%).

Race/Ethnicity and SES

There were very few differences by race/ethnicity with regard to the

Trends/General

This study found that 13% of packaged food and 35% of packaged beverage purchases included low-content nutrient claims, and this proportion of purchases did not change significantly between 2008 and 2012. These are lower than previous studies’ estimates of the overall prevalence of nutrient claims in the US food supply5, 8 (53% in the most recent Food Label and Package Survey8), which could be because previous estimates included both low- and high-content nutrient claims (eg, “high-fiber,”

Conclusions

Low-content nutrient claims are a common feature among US household food and beverage purchases and are more common among RTD beverages than packaged foods. However, low-content nutrient claims are not necessarily reliable indicators of a product’s nutritional quality. When examined collectively, packaged food and beverage purchases with any low/no-content claim had lower mean energy, total sugar, total fat, and sodium densities relative to purchases with no such claim, but substantial

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Terry Hartman, MPH, MS, CCRC, for his coordination and management of this project.

L. S. Taillie is a research assistant professor, Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health, and a Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

References (30)

  • US Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition....
  • V.S. Freimuth et al.

    Health advertising: Prevention for profit

    Am J Public Health

    (1988)
  • M.B. Brandt et al.

    Tracking label claims

    Food Technol

    (2009)
  • C. Piernas et al.

    Trends in purchases and intake of foods and beverages containing caloric and low-calorie sweeteners over the last decade in the United States

    Pediatr Obes

    (2013)
  • E.L. Vyth et al.

    Actual use of a front-of-pack nutrition logo in the supermarket: Consumers’ motives in food choice

    Public Health Nutr

    (2010)
  • Cited by (32)

    • Persuasive packaging? The impact of packaging color and claims on young consumers’ perceptions of product healthiness, sustainability and tastiness

      2023, Appetite
      Citation Excerpt :

      The beverages were also presented with or without a nutrition claim. We selected the claim ‘sugarfree’, given that this claim is often included on beverages (Taillie et al., 2017). In addition, people prefer short and simple claims, and are better able to understand them if they are familiar with the nutrient (Hodgkins et al., 2019).

    • Impact of warning labels on reducing health halo effects of nutrient content claims on breakfast cereal packages: A mixed-measures experiment

      2021, Appetite
      Citation Excerpt :

      Nutrient content (NC) claims, such as “high in fiber” or “low in fat,” are the most prevalent health-related strategies on food packages (Colby et al., 2010; Kaur et al., 2016; Mayhew et al., 2016; Taillie et al., 2017) and in food advertising (Choi et al., 2013; Nan et al., 2013). These claims are commonly used with foods high in sugar, fats, and sodium (Choi et al., 2013; Colby et al., 2010; Lapierre et al., 2017; Taillie et al., 2017; Yoon et al., 2009), which are associated with numerous health risks (World Health Organization, 2003). The pervasive use of NC claims on products high in sugar, fats, and sodium is concerning because people tend to generalize from the one positive attribute in the NC claim to the whole product, leading to beliefs that the product is healthy, regardless of its total nutritional content (Choi et al., 2013; Hall et al., 2020; Schuldt et al., 2012).

    • Nutrition Claims on Fruit Drinks Are Inconsistent Indicators of Nutritional Profile: A Content Analysis of Fruit Drinks Purchased by Households With Young Children

      2021, Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
      Citation Excerpt :

      Previous work has explored the nutritional quality of fruit drinks marketed specifically to children and the number and general type (eg, ingredient, nutrition-related, real) of claims on child-directed fruit drinks.22 Additionally, other studies have documented the presence of low/no calorie and sugar claims on juice and juice beverages.18 This work adds to the body of science by documenting claims with a high degree of specificity in a large sample of fruit drink products and by comparing the presence of claims with nutritional quality in this product category.

    • The impact of front-of-package claims, fruit images, and health warnings on consumers' perceptions of sugar-sweetened fruit drinks: Three randomized experiments

      2020, Preventive Medicine
      Citation Excerpt :

      One promising policy strategy for reducing SSB intake is restricting marketing cues, including nutrient content claims and images, on SSB packaging. Nutrient content claims (i.e., text statements characterizing the level of a nutrient such as “low fat”) are a highly prevalent marketing claim used on beverage packages, and are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (Taillie et al., 2017). A 2014 report found that fruit drink packages in the U.S. contain an average of 4.3 different claims (Harris et al., 2014).

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    L. S. Taillie is a research assistant professor, Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health, and a Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    S. W. Ng is an associate research professor, Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health, and a Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    Y. Xue is a senior data scientist, Duke-UNC USDA Center for Behavioral Economics and Healthy Food Choice Research, Duke University, Durham.

    E. Busey is a research assistant, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    M. Harding is an associate professor of Economics and Statistics, University of California, Irvine.

    Supplementary materials: Tables 1 and 2 and Figures 5 and 6 are available at www.jandonline.org. Podcast available at www.jandonline.org/content/podcast

    STATEMENT OF POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

    FUNDING/SUPPORT This work was supported by a grant from Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and by the Carolina Population Center (CPC P2C HD050924). Data for this study were provided by the Duke-UNC USDA Center for Behavioral Economics and Healthy Food Choice Research through third party agreements with the US Department of Agriculture and IRI (Information Resources, Inc). Any opinions, findings, recommendations, or conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture. The analysis, findings, and conclusions expressed in this paper also should not be attributed to IRI. This research was conducted in collaboration with US Department of Agriculture under a third-party agreement with IRI.

    View full text