Read food labels and stay slim

People, especially women, who read labels on food products are thinner, according to a study.

The study by an international team of scientists found that female consumers who consult food labels weigh nearly 4 kilograms less.

Along with the Universities of Tennessee, Arkansas (USA) and the Norwegian Institute for Agricultural Finance Research, the University of Santiago de Compostela has participated in the study on the relationship between reading the food label and obesity.

The results indicated that the body mass index of those consumers who read that label is 1.49 points lower than those who never consider such information when doing their food shopping. This translates as a reduction of 3.91 kg for an American woman measuring 1.62 cm and weighing 74 kg.

The data was taken from the annual National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) performed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Some 25,640 observations were collected on health and eating and shopping habits. These included various questions on whether participants read the nutritional information in supermarkets and how often.

"First we analysed which was the profile of those who read the nutritional label when purchasing foods, and then we moved on to the relationship with their weight," Maria Loureiro, lead author of the study, explained to SINC.

The team found very significant differences between consumers that read labels and those that do not. On the one hand, the study showed that the smoking population pays much less attention to this information.

According to the researcher, "their lifestyle involves less healthy habits and as a consequence, it could be the case that they are not so worried about the nutritional content of the food they eat, according to our results."

Furthermore, the city-dwelling population takes nutritional information into account the most. This is also the case for those with high school education and universities studies.

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