The health impact of health and nutrition claims in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Slovenia
A healthy diet can protect against a number of non-communicable diseases. One approach to improving diets is to provide information to consumers to help them make healthier food choices as research has shown that those who read the nutritional information on food labelling have a healthier diet. However, nutritional information can be difficult to understand, particularly in a retail environment where food choices are generally made quickly.
Health claims appear on food packaging and indicate that a relationship exists between a food and a health outcome. According to the European Union (EU) Regulation health claims should help consumers identify healthier products whilst not being misleading.
Using data from the EU FP7 funded project CLYMBOL, Asha’s DPhil project will assess the prevalence of health claims in five European countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia and the United Kingdom and compare the nutritional quality of products with and without health claims. It will then go on to model the effects of health claims on health outcomes.
Asha is funded through the CLYMBOL project (European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration) and is supervised by Professor Mike Rayner and by Dr Peter Scarborough.