Nutrition Institute in cooperation with Consumer association of Slovenia and Jožef Stefan Institute started a new research program »Innovative solutions for informed choices: A tool to encourage healthier choices by supporting consumers to monitor and evaluate food composition data.« Information on food labels may support consumers in the selection of foods with a health-beneficial composition if they are read, understood and used by the consumer in the selection of foods. This is especially relevant after the legislation entry into force that regulates mandatory nutrition labelling on pre-packaged foods.
The importance of this type of information is also highlighted in the National Program on Diet and Physical Activity for Health 2015-2025. In the framework of the Innovative Solutions for Informed Choices program, we will address these challenges, on the one hand, we will raise awareness among population to read and use information on food labels, and on the other hand, encourage the food business operators to reformulate food products and consequently, to improve the supply of foods with better nutritional profile. The program is financed by the Ministry of Health in the Republic of Slovenia.
Program is founded by:
Innovative solutions for informed choices: ensuring operation of mobile application Do you know what you eat and upgrade with additional information useful for consumers
Participating organisations:
- Nutrition Institute (program leader)
- Jožef Stefan Institute
- Consumer association of Slovenia
Program is founded:
- Republic of Slovenia - Ministry of Health
(Co-founding programs on Diet and Physical Activity)
(Co-founding programs on Diet and Physical Activity):
- 2019-2022
Program description:
Encouraging consumers to consider the nutritional composition of foods in the selection of foods represents a great potential for protecting public health. On the one hand, consumers choosing healthier options is more beneficial in supporting their health and of their household members, and on the other hand, increasing consumption of healthier foods influences the availability and affordability of such foods for other residents. Increased demand leads to greater interest in the production of such foods for producers, higher sales can lower production costs (production of larger batches), while commercial companies are also prepared to offer better shelves for their products to larger areas of their shelves. All together represents a circle, which is governed by the consumer choices. The more consumers will encroach on healthier foods, the greater it will be healthier food products availability and the competition.
A major change for consumers in recent years is that since December 2016 for most of the pre-packaged foods food nutrition labelling is mandatory. This means that consumers have easy access to information on food labels, based on which they can assess the appropriateness of the nutritional quality of the food. Nonetheless, the healthy choice for citizens is still a great challenge due to different causes. The key problem in this is mainly consumer’s lack of knowledge, they often do not read food labels, or they are not able to critically evaluate the information presented on the label. Based on Regulation (EC) No. 1169/2011, food business operators must provide on pre-packaged foods nutritional information, such as energy and the individual nutrients, but it is a relatively demanding task for the consumer to independently interpret whether the amount of nutrients contained is high, low or adequate according to his needs. The research results have shown that nutrition labelling on food labels represents a potential for improvement in dietary habits, however the significantly higher potential for improvement of dietary habits is achieved with the interpretation of nutritional value with various tools, as for example - Food Traffic Light Labelling System. While ensuring consumers proper understanding of food labels, there are also several other challenges, like use of voluntary elements on labels, which may be misinterpreted, or like problems of readability (specially for visually impaired), since the font size on food labels is relatively small. Based on the developments in the field of modern information and communication technologies, the most developed countries have set up some smart phone applications to aid consumers on previously described problems that are extremely rapidly developing.
The overall objective of the program “Innovative Solutions for Informed Choices” is to encourage people of Slovenia to monitor food composition data and to facilitate their interpretation of this information, and consequently promoting healthier choices and food reformulation. The objective will be achieved with providing people the use of modern technologies (smart phone application) easy and quick access to data on food composition, while at the same time we will also facilitate their interpretation of the data and thus promote healthier choices. In practice, this will mean that with the help of a smartphone and for this purpose developed smart phone application, the consumer will scan the product EAN code and receive feedback information on the product composition, including the interpretation of the nutritional information based on the nutrient profiling Food Traffic Light Labelling System. For this purpose, an up-to-date food composition database will be established.
The main activities of the proposed program are:
- (1) supply of prepackaged foods is changing continuously (new products are comming, producers are reformulationg existing products), so database must be updated continously.
- (2) Information technology is quickly developing and operational systems on smartphones are updating. Automatic updates of smartphones bring changes for mobile applications and these have to comply to new standards. Mobile applications which are not up to date become unfunctional or even stop working. For this reason regular updates of the application should be provided.
- (3) An important challenge is also additional dissemination of mobile application among users. It is cruical that users are actively involved and their needs are identified. An upgrade of the application should follow these needs and offer additional useful solutions for users. Our goal is to encourage individuals to consider nutritional composition and help them with correct interpretation of labelling information.
- (4) Food bussiness operators should be included and encouraged to maximize supply of foods with more favourable nutritional composition, which will reach all consumers, not only users of the mobile application. Food bussiness operators should be enabled to quickly and timely contribute with nutritional composition data.
The smart phone application is being developed at the Jožef Stefan Institute, and an extremely large initial challenge represents the setup of a database completed with data on the food composition, which is the basis for the smart phone application. On the market, there are dozens of thousands different foods available, the direct use of other international databases is not possible because large number of local food products in our market, as well as products of multinational companies may vary widely between countries.
The database will combine existing national databases, including the Open Platform for Clinical Nutrition database, which will cover all the most commonly-purchased foods. Additionally, food business operators are also invited to provide information to ensure that their portfolio is up to date.
In the project, we also cooperate with GS1 Slovenia, an independent and non-profit organization in the field of global standards, in frames of which the global GDSN e-catalog is synchronized, this is the base for granting a bar code to an individual food product. The database model will comply with GS1 global standards, which will facilitate the input and exchange of data. All manufacturers, which will forward the nutrition information of foods to the global e-catalog GS1 GDSN, will be able to share this data in an automated way without any additional work. Application users will be able to take care of the database updates. Foods that will not be found in the database will be proposed to users for entry, and manufacturers will be able to edit the data for their products.
More information:
- Nutrition Institute, Tržaška cesta 40, 1000 Ljubljana - e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
