Rotulagem nutricional de alimentos: importância e um novo olhar frente à nova legislação

Abstract

The preference for fast food has been prioritized over the years, instead of minimally processed foods that are often left aside due to the accelerated routine. In this way, nutritional labeling on food packaging came up in order to bring more information to consumers, such as expiration date, ingredients, among others. The aim of the work was to evaluate the importance of the nutrition labeling and the perspectives which the new legislation of nutrition labeling nutritional (represented by Resolution – RDC n° 429/2020 and Normative Instruction n° 75/2020) will bring to consumers and industry. In order to get information about the habits of the population of Ceará, most of them residing in Fortaleza, and to ascertain their knowledge and interpretations regarding the nutritional labels present on packaging, a survey was carried out using Google Forms, in which 16 questions were created. At the first moment, socioeconomic data were collected. Then, questions about knowledge, doubts and suggestions regarding the current labeling and the new legislation were made, all preceded by a Free and Informed Consent Term – FICT and 295 total responses were obtained. An interview via Google Meet with 3 companies was carried out. They were characterized by A (coconut water company), B (cookie company) and C (starch company) to get information about their perspectives in relation to the new nutritional legislation. The results from the form pointed that there is a basic knowledge regarding nutritional labeling and 99.3% of the participants recognize its importance in a package, but only 68.0% read it and 47.8% say they have doubts about the interpretation of the content present in a label. 63.7% say they don't miss anything on the label, however when introducing the new nutrition label and what it would change, 99.0% agreed it would bring more clarity and improvements. Among the items that consumers have the most doubts are the interpretation of the nutrition label, understanding the amount per serving and the amount of each ingredient. Regarding the interviews with the industries, the Technical Managers of companies A and B started a reformulation work to lower the impact on sales. Company C is confident that its product will be highlighted in the market, due to the clean ingredients list. There is a clear need to expand knowledge so that the population can make cleaner and healthier choices, such as raw natural and minimally processed.