Investigation of the influential factors on consumer's use of nutrition labeling

Objective To investigate the status of consumers' knowledge,attitude and practice(KAP) towards nutrition labeling and the influential factors.To provide the basis for the nutrition labels' promotion.Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted among 1 141 consumers in Luwan District,Shanghai.Results Only 5.8% of the consumers understood the nutrition labeling completely.82.0% of the consumers regarded it necessary on the usage of the nutrition labeling.In the purchase of food,30.3% of consumer's purchase decisions were affected by nutrition labels.The result of multivariate Logistic regression showed that the following factors were significantly associated with the effect: age(OR=0.962,95% CI:0.933～0.992),education(OR=0.270,95% CI:0.084～0.866),understanding of basic nutrition knowledge(OR=0.949,95% CI:0.915～0.985) and the attitude toward the essentiality on nutrition labeling(OR=0.912,95% CI:0.895～0.941).Conclusions The level of knowledge and practice about nutrition labeling was high among consumers,but only a few of them understood the nutrition labeling completely.It is necessary to implement nutrition and health education aimed at promoting consumers' knowledge and scientific practice about nutrition labeling.