Understanding and Using Patterns of Food Labeling Systems and their Determinants by Medical Students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Increased public knowledge concerning roles of nutrition in prevention of non-communicable diseases have urged people to select healthy foods. The aim of this study was to investigate levels of understanding and use of food labeling systems and their determinants by medical students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.

In a cross-sectional study on medical students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, 2018, 240 medical students were participated using stratified random sampling method. During the study, participants were asked about their use of nutritional value panel, ingredient list and serving size information of the food labels. To assess understanding levels of the food labeling, subjective and objective methods were used.

Based on the findings, 41.2% of the participants always/most often read food labels when purchasing foods, while 34.2% of them read food labels occasionally. The most common reason for non-using food labels included lack of time to read the food labels (40.8%). A relative majority of the participants (42.5%) occasionally used food labels for diet planning. A majority of the participants (74.6%) reported that they somewhat were aware of food label information. Moreover, 70 to 90.4% of the participants chose the right label as the healthiest from three pairs of labels. Understanding and use of food labels were higher in females than males (p = 0.046 and p = 0.038, respectively).

Less than half of the medical students always/most often used food label information when buying food products. Further studies on other populations are needed to suggest recommendations for an effectual food labelling.