Nutri-score Labelling in a UK Restaurant Setting: a Randomised Control Trial

NCT06923241 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: NS in the OOHFS study
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 672
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

An experiment exploring the perceived effectiveness of Nutri-score food labels with calorie labelling compared to calorie labelling only on food choice and consumption in a real-world setting

Conditions

PME; Food Choice; Food Labelling

Keywords

Nutri-score; PME; Food choice

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (2)

• Perceived Message Effectiveness

  An adapted version of the University of North Carolina PME scale will be used to measure health concern, product attitude, and discouragement of item consumption in response to the food menu. Participants will be given the menu they ordered from to look at. All participants will answer 3 questions using a Likert scale ranging from 1 - 5 anchored by "not at all" and "a great deal". The mean response to the three items will be calculated. PME is used as an early indicator of a health message's potential to change behaviour (e.g., reduce selection of less healthy items). The scale has been used previously to identify the potential impact of food labels and is predictive of long-term behaviour.

  Up to 30 weeks

• Nutritional quality of each item and for the full meal

  Nutritional quality for meal choices will be calculated using the UK NPM scoring system. This calculates a score (continuous variable) for a product by deducting a total score for positive nutrients from a total score for negative nutrients. A lower score represents greater nutritional quality and a higher score represents poorer nutritional quality. We will calculate the mean NPM score weighted by energy content of items for each participant. This will ensure that the NPM score of main dishes will be weighted higher than that of starters or sides (assuming energy content of selected main is higher than any starters or sides), leading to a more representative overall NPM score for food orders. This will be done using the weighted.mean function in R. This function multiplies each value (i.e. NPM scores for individual items) by its corresponding weight (kcal content of individual items), sums all items and then divides this by the sum of the weights.

  Up to 30 weeks

Secondary Outcomes (4)

• NS label of each item selected

  Up to 30 weeks

• Energy content of all food ordered

  Up to 30 weeks

• Energy and nutrients consumed

  Up to 30 weeks

• Later intake

  Up to 30 weeks

Study Arms (2)

Restaurant 1

ACTIVE COMPARATOR

Restaurant 1: plant-based cafe

Behavioral: menu labelling type

Restaurant 2

ACTIVE COMPARATOR

Restaurant 2: University cafe

Behavioral: menu labelling type

Interventions

menu labelling type BEHAVIORAL

Participants will be given a restaurant's menu with calorie information or a menu with calorie information and NS labelling.

Restaurant 1; Restaurant 2

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years+
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• Can visit a restaurant in Liverpool city centre
• Regularly eat food prepared out of the home (from restaurants, cafes, fast food etc., at least once a month)
• Over the age of 18 years
• Fluent English speaker

You may not qualify if:

• Pregnant/breastfeeding
• You have been diagnosed with a current or historic eating disorder

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Liverpool: lead
• University of Bristol: collaborator
• Liverpool John Moores University: collaborator

Study Sites (1)

University of Liverpool

Liverpool, Merseyside, L69 7ZA, United Kingdom

Location

Study Officials

• Eric Robinson

  University of Liverpool

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: SINGLE
• Who Masked: PARTICIPANT
• Masking Details: To attempt to reduce the likelihood of aim guessing, participants will be recruited to a study described as 'A study of consumer behaviour in different restaurants'.
• Purpose: PREVENTION
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Professor

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: March 26, 2025
• First Posted: April 11, 2025
• Study Start: March 27, 2025
• Primary Completion: August 1, 2025
• Study Completion: August 1, 2025
• Last Updated: February 20, 2026

Record last verified: 2026-02

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: STUDY PROTOCOL, SAP, ICF, ANALYTIC CODE
• Time Frame: IPD and supporting information will be available once the study is completed and published, with no end date.
• Access Criteria: The IPD and supporting information will be uploaded to the Open Science Framework where it will be openly available.

Locations

GB (1)