NCT06260176

Vending Labeling Sales and Intercepts Study

A Large Scale Long-term Randomized Trial of Nutrition Labeling Interventions

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 1,065 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Pennsylvania · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The aim of this study is to compare the impact of 4 different types of front of package (FOP) food and beverage messages: 1) green labels on healthy foods, 2) red/yellow/green labels on less healthy/moderately healthy/healthy foods, 3) physical activity calorie equivalent labels, and 4) posters reminding consumers of the sweetened beverage tax on consumers' beverage and snack selections.

Detailed description

This project involves a randomized field experiment. The investigators worked with the vending contractor for the City of Philadelphia to randomize vending machine locations (covering \~260 beverage and snack machines) to one of the four different message conditions: 1) single green traffic light labels (on healthy foods); 2) multiple traffic light labels (red traffic light labels applied to less healthy foods, yellow applied to moderately healthy foods, and green on healthy foods); 3) physical activity labels (calorie content displayed in terms of physical activity equivalents); 4) posters reminding consumers of the Philadelphia sweetened beverage tax and encouraging healthier choices. The City's vending machine contractors provided monthly aggregated sales data from each machine for analysis. Customer intercepts were also collected at the point of sale, after customers completed their purchase, to evaluate factors that moderate message influence. They were asked to answer questions about their perceptions of the different labels.

Conditions

• Food Preferences
• Obesity
• Weight Gain

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	exposure to healthy labels only	Green labels only for beverages and foods scored as healthy
BEHAVIORAL	exposure to healthiness information	All beverages and foods labeled as either healthy (green), moderately healthy (yellow), or less healthy (red)
BEHAVIORAL	exposure to physical activity equivalents	All beverages and foods labeled with physical activity required to burn their calories
BEHAVIORAL	exposure to sweetened beverage tax messaging	Message reminding consumers to make healthier choices

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-02-01
• Primary completion: 2020-03-12
• Completion: 2020-03-12
• First posted: 2024-02-15
• Last updated: 2024-02-15

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States