The Effect of Shelf Nutrition Labels on Purchases

NuVal® shelf nutrition labels rate the nutritional quality of foods on a scale of 1 (worst) to 100 (best). In 2014, NuVal updated their nutrient profiling system which changed the NuVal score on many foods. The investigators took advantage of this "natural experiment" to assess the extent to which a change in the NuVal score at a grocery chain influenced yogurt purchases, a category with a wide range of more and less healthy alternatives. The investigators supplemented the retail scanner data with a survey of consumers in stores using NuVal labels to obtain their experience with the labels and the extent to which they state it influences their purchases.