Adapting the universal signals of traffic lights to food
packaging David Leonhardt’s “Budgets Behaving Badly” column from
yesterday’s New York Times is a must-read for Nudge enthusiasts
interested in how behavioral economics can be applied to public
policy. One of the ideas in the column, also discussed in Nudge,
is the redesign of fuel economy stickers. Another potential area
for redesigned labels is food packaging, which one Nudge reader
thought could benefit from a traffic light theme. The Cancer
Council of New South Wales in Australia is currently pushing the
traffic light idea to help people make better nutritional
decision making, following some field tests and surveys
involving breakfast cereal, crispbread, and lasagna. (Hat tip to
Stephen Laniel for pointing us to the study, which is here.)
Researchers created a simple traffic light system ranking for
levels of total fat, saturated fat, sugar and sodium. They
compared these labels against other more detailed and
complicated labels, which provided spec