On the crowded supermarket shelves, food products try to attract attention, using packaging and labels to clinch the deal. Around 72% of American consumers say that product packaging influences their purchase decisions. Food companies are aware of this and understand that it applies to packaging design as well as the message conveyed through labels.
Louis Biscotti, the National Leader for Food Beverage Services Group, writes that when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) update d its policy on the nutrition facts label for packaged foods in 2020, food and drink companies found they could use the labels on their packaging to provide nutritional and other data to drive increase in sales. The information on the FDA labels and what they packed onto their labels and packaging greatly increased sales. Many consumers surveyed were more likely to buy products with "natural" labels.
A new report takes a look at the popularity of the "natural" claim on food packaging and it's eye-opening. "Food suppliers can use the label that claims the food is ‘natural' at a relatively low cost because regulatory(监管的) agencies treat the claim as meaning nothing artificial was added and that the product was hardly processed," the authors explain.
While that is certainly valuable information to know, the problem is in consumers' understanding of what "natural" means. Studies show that people think a product labeled as "natural" delivers benefits far beyond what it actually does, with most consumers mistakenly linking health and environmental care qualities to food with "natural" labels. In a 2022 survey, 86% of people reported that they purchased products with "natural" labels because they believed the labels indicated better-than-standard animal welfare and higher environmental care production practices.
That might simply seem discouraging as food producers are taking advantage of consumers' innocence to increase sales. But the more serious problem is how this harms food producers who are actually meeting the standards for stricter labeling. These producers are doing good but ending up at a competitive disadvantage if consumers consider foods labeled "natural" as alike.
As a consequence, any health and environmental care benefits that might have been realized from consumers choosing products that matched their preferences could be lost.
