Almost one-quarter of U.S. consumers do not look at nutrition labels

The FDA recently announced plans to overhaul the Nutrition Facts label on the back of packaged foods. But the announcement comes at a time when the percentage of U.S. consumers who actually read the Nutrition Facts label is declining, states the NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based information company. A decade ago, 15 percent of consumers said that they do not look at the label; now 24 percent of consumers say they do not. 

The FDA’s proposed changes to the Nutrition Facts label, which hasn’t been updated for more than 20 years, will require serving sizes on the label to reflect what, on average, consumers actually eat. The label will also for the first time list added sugars. About 20 percent of all package labels will be adjusted, according to the FDA. Food manufacturers have until July 2018 to comply with the new label rules. The FDA, which first proposed the rule in 2014, estimated at the time that the cost to industry of updating the labels would be about $2 billion, the NPD group said.

As for those consumers who do read the Nutrition Facts label, calories were for a long time the top item checked, but now sugars rank first while total calories are a close second. Following sugars and calories, in rank order of importance, are sodium, total fat and total carbohydrates, according to NPD's Dieting Monitor, an ongoing tracker that captures consumers’ dieting behavior and eating intentions.      

“The reasons why more consumers are not looking at the labels are varied, but among the reasons is that the label hasn’t been updated in over 20 years. Additionally, consumers now have many more resources at their fingertips to research nutritional information,” said Darren Seifer, NPD food and beverage industry analyst. “The fact that there is a new label and it will be more reflective of consumer interests and how they actually eat may recapture their interest.”