The impact of front-of-package traffic light (FoPTL) in the senior high school students’ nutrition labels comprehension

Abstract

The study aimed to evaluate the impact of Front-of-Package Traffic Light (FoPTL) nutrition label on female teenagers’ comprehension of nutritional values. A quasi-experimental design employing the purposive sampling method. The intervention group was given FoPTL nutrition label while the control group was given nutrition facts labels within 3 weeks. Twenty-one subjects in a control group and twenty subjects in an intervention group. Both groups taken from the two selected senior high schools at East Jakarta. Our findings confirm the significant difference in the nutrition labels comprehension between the intervention group and control group ( p < 0.05), with the intervention group having higher scores (39.17 points) than the control group (20.63 points). It can be concluded that FoPTL can improve the nutrition labels comprehension. To mitigate the low comprehension of nutrition labels, schools are encouraged to cooperate with related partners on educating students about nutrition labels. Future studies may wish to consider examining the issue using male teenagers as the research subjects. To that degree, research on both the reading behavior of FoPTL label and the purchasing behavior of packaged food products should be performed.