When researchers evaluated consumers’ understanding of allergy information on food labels, less than half of individuals found the information to be clear.

The study, which is published in Clinical & Experimental Allergy, involved two separate experiments with a total of 96 consumers with food allergies and 105 without. Investigators first randomly presented 18 different food products with labels suggesting peanut was, may be, or was not an ingredient, and then they presented three different formats of information: ‘Produced in a Factory’ and ‘May contain’ or ‘Traces of’. Precautionary allergen labels (PALs) were especially problematic, with consumers attributing anything between 2% and 99% risk of a reaction and anything between 1% and 98% comprehensibility assessments. This suggests that precautionary statements such as ‘may contain peanut’ have little value for consumers and may lead to inappropriate dietary restrictions or risk-taking behavior.

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