Online food retailers do not consistently display nutrition information on their websites — and U.S. laws are lagging behind in mandating the same labeling required for foods sold in brick-and-mortar stores, according to a new analysis.
«Information required to be provided to consumers in conventional grocery stores is not being uniformly provided online — in fact, it only appears on roughly a third of the online grocery items we surveyed,» said Jennifer Pomeranz, an assistant professor of public health policy and management at the NYU School of Global Public Health and lead author of the study, which was published in Public Health Nutrition.
«Our study shows that the online food shopping environment today is a bit of a ‘Wild West,’ with incomplete and inconsistent provision of required nutrition information to consumers,» said Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School and the study’s senior author. «Online shopping will only continue to grow, and this creates an excellent opportunity to positively influence consumers to make healthy and safe choices. We need to leverage this chance to help make progress against the nutrition-related health crisis in this country.»
Online grocery shopping was already rapidly growing before COVID-19 emerged, but the pandemic has greatly accelerated its use. From 2019 to 2020, online grocery sales in the U.S. tripled from 3.4% to 10.2% of total grocery sales, and are projected to reach 21.5% of total sales by 2025. In addition, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) started a pilot program in 2019 to allow Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants to purchase groceries online.
However, this rapid growth in online grocery shopping has outpaced regulatory attention to information appearing on foods sold online. While U.S. law requires nutrition facts, allergen information, and ingredient lists to appear on the physical packaging of food products, these regulations do not currently extend to online retailers. As a result, crucial health and safety information may not be available to online grocery shoppers.
To better understand the landscape of what information appears with online groceries, the researchers analyzed 10 major products across nine major online grocery retailers to identify what information is displayed. They focused on bread, cereals, and drinks — packaged foods that are required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to have a standardized information panel disclosing nutrition facts, a list of ingredients, common food allergens, and, for fruit drinks, the percent juice. The researchers also reviewed the federal government’s legal authorities and limitations for requiring online food retailers to disclose nutrition information.
Story Source:
Materials provided by New York University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.