The printed labels on food may need to be redesigned as the nutritional information is too confusing for consumers.
In a study in the Journal of Marketing, Professor Donald Lichtenstein from the University of Colorado Boulder's Leeds School of Business warned that even health-conscious consumers cannot do the calculations they would need to work out the true nutritional content.
The problem is "health framing" in which companies present serving sizes as smaller than you would expect to make the nutritional values, including calories, appear lower.
He said: "The take-away message is when you look at the calories per serving on a candy bar or a can of soup at the grocery store, be sure to look at the serving size too."
When consumers pay attention to the values on the printed labels but do not consider the serving size is when selecting the product for them.
For this reason he suggested labelling needs to be clearer and policies need to be introduced for some kind of uniformity.
Scientists have also recently called for caffeinated drinks to be labelled in the same way as over the counter caffeine tablets.
Denny Bros Ltd, 24 January 2012
