Facilitating healthy choice at the point of sale: fine-tuning nutrition labels versus editing choice?

Obesity rates in Europe have lead to a debate on what factors influence consumers’ in-store food choices most. This study aims to assess the contribution of nutrition labels against the impact of choice sets to facilitating healthy decision-making. Different front-of-pack labeling formats were implemented on products that were presented to representative consumer samples. Choice sets and product categories were systematically varied. The results indicate that nutrition information in general contribute only little, while extending choice sets with healthier product alternatives of the same category – i.e., ‘choice editing’ – largely contributes to healthy decision-making.