According to the World Health Organisation more than one billion adults are now obese or overweight (WHO. 2012) this is largely due to the consumption of more energy-dense, nutrient-poor food with high levels of sugar and saturated fats.
Nutritional facts on product labels are the main information interface between customers and their food. These information guidelines are misleading and produce a dizzy analysis of energy, nutrients and average daily dietary intake. Customers now confused with the overload of nutritional information of their food and drinks are led to poor product choices, resulting in devastating side-effects to their health.
- Existing measure system (100g) isn’t clear.
- Using weight as a standard makes it difficult to comprehend the volume of a product.
- Too many options of measure mislead the consumer.
- The system is open to manipulation of nutrition facts.
- GDA speculates on the food intake of the general population.
Why are consumers struggling to make the right food choices?
Currently, food brands are increasing the usage of aggressive front-of-package labels that confuse, mislead and compromise the healthy consumption of food.
The existing nutritional standards are far too open to providing misleading information to the consumer.
The measurement method is neither precise enough nor comprehensive enough for the consumers around the world and it produces an inaccurate amount of energy and fat intake per portion.
Using methods of Design-Thinking for collecting and analysing information data, this project achieves deep insights into customer’s experiences and behaviours during shopping. Based on in depth research analysis this project provides a proposal for a user centred intuitive design solution the “Meet your Food System”.
The Meet your Food Integrated Information System provides a comprehensive solution to the overload of information found in supermarkets. Reliable and tailored information is easily accessible for customers before, during, and after their shopping experience. They monitor and track their health and the effects of their product choices through a sophisticated combination of technologies, interfaces and touch points both inside the supermarket and in the comfort and privacy of their own home.
Through the analysis of the research outcomes the team was able to observe some clear design opportunities. The research led to the redesigning of the current nutritional labelling system in order to provide a comprehensive solution to the overload of information found in supermarkets. One of the purposes of changing the label system was to provide an easier way of understanding the portion sizes and guidelines that were used to measure the nutritional values of a product. It was necessary to provide people with a system of measurement that they were more familiar and comfortable with unlike the current systems, which use 100g portions as well as percentages further confusing the user.
The proposed solution to this problem was to use the cup and spoon measures which are currently used in cooking and baking recipes. The group then expanded on this by also using other volume measurements that might be easily recognizable to the user such as by glass and also per unit and package.
The second problem that needed to be addressed was the levels of information offered on the packages. The proposed solution to this was to first divide the levels of information according to importance from front of package information to back of packaging information.
To make the calorie intake information even more transparent the group proposed using a physical activity comparison. Every label was designed with different sports or physical activities in order to fit into a calorie amount = calorie burn activity.
The labels describe the time, distance and activity required to burn the calorie amount that a product contains.
The Meet your Food Integrated Information System provides a comprehensive solution to the overload of information found in supermarkets. Reliable and tailored information is easily accessible for customers before, during, and after their shopping experience.
They monitor and track their health and the effects of their product choices through a sophisticated combination of technologies, interfaces and touch points both inside the supermarket and in the comfort and privacy of their own home.
A system was developed in order to provide a fully equipped service to empower the customer with transparency and honest information in order to chose their products wisely.
Meet your food – nutrition guideline system is a reference guide for nutrition information present on food and beverage packaging. The guidelines shows how much energy and nutrients are present inside product’s packages in supermarket. It also provides percentage information about the daily amount needs of a person’s daily dietary intake. It also offers a system based on scanning products to compare them and help users make the right choices according to their needs and health.
All of the touch points together help contribute to shape a solid integrated system for empowering consumers to choose their products wisely and to help them achieve better health as a long term goal through the Meet your Food service.
Meet your Food is the beginning of a much-needed shift in the nutritional information design paradigm.
Immensely relevant for people with overweight, heart problem and diabetes.
Through solving the problems of nutritional standard information and portion guidelines within the scope of one integrated system, Meet your Food enables social and economic sustainability by facilitating the empowerment of user groups to live healthier happier and more conscious lives.
The market has the opportunity to get costumer’s loyalty. It is a brand strategy to get more costumers as a reliable and secure information about nutrition facts.
Meet your Food is the beginning of a much-needed shift in the nutritional information design paradigm to improve people’s experiences and empower them to live healthier and happier lives.
Meet your Food is a collective project conceived and developed in MAID (Masters of Integrated Design International) at the Bauhaus city of Dessau in Hochschule Anhalt University, Germany.