Sumiya Sulthana
Nutritionist
The following is an actual conversation between an iCliniq user and a doctor that has been reviewed and published as a Premium Q&A.
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Patient's Query
Hello doctor,
I am currently redesigning the common nutritional label to make it more to encouraging people to make healthier decisions while grocery shopping. I would love it if you can take a few moments to answer some of my questions below as they are important to our research and final design. Please feel free to answer as many questions and at any length that is comfortable for you.
What do you think is the most common and most damaging misconception people have when it comes to purchasing food in the supermarket? Do you think that people focus too much on calorie counting and not enough on eating healthy foods? If you can include only three things in a nutritional label, what would you choose? In your experience, what do people mostly focus on when studying nutritional labels, calories, fats, or sodium? What do you think they should be focusing on the most?
In your opinion, how can people make more educated decisions when grocery shopping? Do you think the nutritional label is enough to rely on? If you were to design a completely new nutritional label, how would you make it easier to understand or read than the previous five examples of nutritional labels? Do you have any suggestions?
Of the many food trends that constantly spring up, should the average consumer believe any slogan slapped across the packaging of food products? What are some tell-tale signs to be aware of?
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question; you are helping in more ways than you might think.
Hi,
Welcome to icliniq.com.
All the best for your projects. I think it will take time to teach people to understand the importance of nutrition labeling but with my experience, I can answer your questions from the way I have understood by my patients.
Misconception spreads mainly through advertisement. People does not read and they want to just understand what media say. The trend of looking into calorie content is increasing mostly on our IT people.
I would prefer calories from sugar, calories from fat and sodium content of product per 200 g. About calories, I think we need to teach each detail of sources of fat, sodium and potassium levels.
I guess all medical professionals need to teach the importance of reading, food labeling as we can observe an increase rate of metabolic disorder. If we guide in the proper way it could be helpful, it might be in schools or some awareness programs.
A small note on the ingredient used and its importance or guiding note on macro as well as micronutrient uses in points.
The mantra of advertisement needs to be changed or we need to explain the concept of being healthy with the use of daily simple products.
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Nutritionist
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