CONSUMERS’ PERCEPTION OF NUTRITIONAL TRAFFIC LIGHT IN FOOD PRODUCTS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON NEW NUTRITIONAL POLICY IN IRAN

Background and Aim: Background and objectives: Today, the pivotal issue of nutrition transition, as one of the consequences of urbanization and the increasing of population, has occurred throughout the world, including in our country, and has been the basis for increasing the incidence of non-communicable diseases (1). Hence, a new thinking has emerged in relation to changing patterns of food production and consumption in the world today, including sustainable diets and sustainable nutrition in the field of consumption, and policies have been developed to provide healthy and safe nutrition as a dimension of sustainable nutrition. One of the policies that has been developed in recent years to help consumers make healthy food choices is the policy of inserting nutritional traffic light on food packaging because it has been proven that nutrition labeling can lead consumers toward more healthy food choices (2-4). In this regard, the insertion of nutritional traffic light on food products has been mandatory since the beginning of 2016 after two years from the optional phase. In this approach, the amounts of sugar, salt, fat and trans-fatty acids are labeled in a food product with green, yellow and red colors. This policy was designed with the aim of increasing the awareness of consumers and modifying the pattern of consumption for promoting health. Therefore, in this study, we aimed exploring the consumers perception of nutritional traffic light. Methods: Methods: In this study, qualitative method was used to achieve the study objectives. The study population was adults aged 20-64 years old living in Tehran. The study was done with purposeful sampling and then, with theoretical sampling and the participants engagement was completed after reaching theoretical saturation. A semi-structured individual interview was conducted and MAXQDA 10 software was used to manage, coding and interpret data. The data analysis was done using the thematic method (5). Findings: The results indicate that 67.5% of the participants did not know the nutritional traffic light on food products after more than two years of implementation of this policy. The most important ways that participants acquired their information about the nutritional traffic light were television, newspapers, virtual networks, others Quotations, media scientific interviews, parents, advertisement and the Internet. Among the people who were aware of the traffic light or those unaware and this label was introduced to them, the most important perceptions included:1. The traffic light indicates the bad or the good of the nutrient; Color means important items; satisfaction from traffic light components; modified shape of nutrition value tables; indicates basic information of foods; help to have better choice; green color means little harm, standard, healthy and beautiful; red color means harmful, bad for health. 2. Participants expressed reasons for not paying attention to the traffic light, including: lack of knowledge about colors concepts, having no substitution for food products with red color in its traffic light, having insufficient time for using traffic light, small size of traffic light labels on packages, and no advertising in media to introduce this type of labels. 3. They demonstrated on some defects which were the reasons for not focusing on traffic light and use it to select food consciously. These weaknesses are as follows: disproportion of the traffic light colors with the background color, having graphical problem, complexity of color with written information, need high precision, non-stimulation of curiosity due to low print quality, not attracting the consumers attention, need to glasses to read, and misunderstanding of colors concepts. Conclusion: It is concluded that this policy require to be publicized in order to achieve its goals. Innovative procedures are needed to familiarize the concept of nutritional traffic light labeling to consumers. Also, the participants recommended using the advertisement through the media as one of the ways to introduce this kind of labeling as well as modifying the print quality, placing the traffic light on where to attract the attention and educating schooled children with the aim of institutionalizing traffic light use.

کلیدواژه ها:

consumer ، perception ، traffic light ، food package