Abstract

Nutritional labels are regarded as a useful tool to highlight essential information about nutritional value and composition of food products, leading consumers to make healthy decisions. However, while a fair percentage of Malaysian consumers claim they looked for, read, and understood the nutritional labels, these claims contradict the study data of nutrition-label usage. This study explores the use of nutritional labels among Malaysian consumers as well as design elements applied on labels. Four hundred and fifteen surveys were collected from major retail outlets in the Klang Valley. The questionnaires collected information about demographics, attitudes toward using nutritional labels, and the preferred design elements for nutritional labels. Results showed that, although 68.6 percent of consumers recognize the purpose of nutritional labels, the low propensity to use them was due to confusion about how information was displayed (31.2 percent), too much time spent on reading (51.8 percent), and the important details not visibly designed to inform at first glance (52.5 percent). The results also highlighted that design elements such as typefaces, colors, and graphics were essential elements for aiding the effectiveness of the presentation of information on nutritional labels.