Food label literacy and its determinants among residents of Bathinda city: A mixed methods study

Food labels are one of the most important and direct means of communicating information to consumers about food products.

It was a mixed methods study conducted among 162 consumers in 15 supermarkets of Bathinda city using a pretested structured questionnaire regarding food label literacy and determinants of food choices of consumers of supermarkets. This information was triangulated with qualitative data obtained by conducting in-depth interviews with 12 participants. The suitability of the data for the application of factor analysis was confirmed, and nine factors were obtained that explained 79.51% of variance according to the inflection point of the scree plot.

It was observed that most of the consumers (often 39.5%, sometimes 35.8%) read nutrition facts labels when buying prepackaged food. 24.7% 'rarely or never' paid attention to food labels. Professionals and semiprofessionals were more frequent food-label readers than other occupational categories. This difference was statistically significant. Multivariate analysis revealed that unskilled workers were not able to comprehend the information about added sugar and sodium. Label reading increased with educational status, with the majority of professionals reading the food labels, and the difference was statistically significant.

People found it difficult to comprehend nutrition information, so there is a need to create public awareness on various components of food labels so as to increase the utilization of information given on food labels and encourage healthy food consumption.