Nutrition Label Use in a Latin American Middle-Income Country: Guatemala

Obesity has become a major public health issue in Latin America. Nutrition labels have been proposed as 1 strategy to address the obesity epidemic as they may encourage consumers to reassess their choices at point-of-purchase.

We sought to determine the knowledge and stated use of the nutrition label in Guatemala.

Caregivers were randomly selected from public and private schools in Guatemala City. Caregivers were interviewed to assess knowledge and behaviors related to nutrition label use. Anthropometric measurements were measured using standardized procedures. Descriptive statistics and χ2 test were used to determine the differences between school types.

Higher-income caregivers (88%) were more likely to be aware of nutrition labels, compared to those from low-income families (51%; P < .05). Furthermore, they were more likely to use it more frequently (42.2%) than their counterparts (18.3%; P = .03). Less than 50% of caregivers used nutrition labels for determining the amount of calories or nutritional content in a food portion, to compare nutrient content for different brands of the same food or to select products low in sugar, fat, and/or sodium.

Our results provide evidence of the need to further explore nutritional label use and design that can better inform caregivers in Guatemala and other middle-income countries. Furthermore, given that the nutrition labels were for the most part rarely used by the participants in our study and that there are low literacy rates, other straightforward, easy-to-use strategies to communicate nutrition information at the point-of-sale could be useful to explore.