Opinion Marketers should stop fooling customers. We need readable product labels

Product labels often contain misleading and camouflaged information regarding calorie, fat, sugar, or sodium content, which can pose serious health risks. Failing to list common allergens (nuts, gluten, soy) or excess sugar — for instance, in sugary drinks — is a serious non-compliance issue. Taking advantage of lax regulations and inadequate policy checks, manufacturers continue to unabashedly display and sell “unhealthy” products everywhere — from mom-and-pop stores to swanky supermarkets.

India has the second-highest number of cancer deaths in Asia and is a significant contributor to the global burden. The rise in consumption of processed foods and sugary drinks is a major contributing factor to the increasing incidence of cancer in India. As we approach National Cancer Awareness Day, observed on November 7, it is high time that food products be flagged for possible “health hazards.”

Marketers should stop fooling customers and making them struggle to find basic information like expiry dates and possible health risks. Customers have the right to correct product information. We need readable product labels.

Ambiguous clutter of information needs to be replaced with clear visual imagery. Essential information should be conveyed through pictograms, colour-coded logos, warning signs, hazard symbols, and text in clear fonts.

The best practices on product labelling from other countries provide a useful frame of reference for applying design-thinking principles to consumer-centric product labels. Several countries effectively use visual imagery on packages instead of confusing jargon and indecipherable information clutter.

For instance, a good example to learn from is the recent proposal by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to introduce a front-of-package nutrition label that aims to provide consumers with quick, at-a-glance information about a food’s saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar content. This “Nutrition Information Box” would use an easy-to-understand “Low,” “Med,” and “High” rating system and would complement the more detailed nutrition facts already printed on packaged foods.

The rule aims to help consumers make more informed, healthier choices. Such front-of-pack pictorial alerts help buyers quickly understand if sugar, fat, salt, or trans fats exceed safe limits.

In the UK, the “Traffic Lights” labelling system, which uses red, amber, and green on front-of-pack labels to show if a food is high, medium, or low in saturated fat, sugars, and salt, is an effective and unambiguous way to help consumers understand what they purchase.

Warning labels with stark high sugar/fat signs, adopted by several countries like Brazil, have proven effective in cutting sales of sugary drinks. Clear warning labels are hard to ignore.

Star ratings — used in Australia and New Zealand — where more stars indicate higher nutritional value, and easy colour-coded visual cues make it easier to spot unhealthy foods. These warning labels could push brands to reformulate products with less sugar, salt, and fat.

Recycling symbols that use a Möbius loop of arrows with a number inside to indicate the type of plastic or material used — or hazard icons given as diamond-shaped symbols to indicate specific dangers — also take into account environmental and safety concerns.

It is also important to use clear, legible fonts and high-contrast ink to display expiry or “best before” dates. Locating expiry dates on food packages is often an ordeal for consumers. Uniformity in style and placement across all packages is what’s needed.

Consumers have a right to be informed about the products they purchase through clear, accurate, and unambiguous labels on packages. Why should they have to struggle for it?

The writer is Professor at Faculty of Management Studies & Research, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. She is author of Strategic Human Resource Management, Cambridge University Press, University of Cambridge, UK