Mazariegos Monica, Barnoya Joaquin
1 Cardiovascular Surgery Unit of Guatemala, Guatemala City, Guatemala.
2 Division of Public Health Sciences, Department of Surgery, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA.
Food Nutr Bull. 2017 Mar;38(1):128-132. doi: 10.1177/0379572116684242. Epub 2016 Dec 21.
Obesity has become a major public health issue in Latin America. Nutrition labels have been proposed as 1 strategy to address the obesity epidemic as they may encourage consumers to reassess their choices at point-of-purchase.
We sought to determine the knowledge and stated use of the nutrition label in Guatemala.
Caregivers were randomly selected from public and private schools in Guatemala City. Caregivers were interviewed to assess knowledge and behaviors related to nutrition label use. Anthropometric measurements were measured using standardized procedures. Descriptive statistics and χ test were used to determine the differences between school types.
Higher-income caregivers (88%) were more likely to be aware of nutrition labels, compared to those from low-income families (51%; P < .05). Furthermore, they were more likely to use it more frequently (42.2%) than their counterparts (18.3%; P = .03). Less than 50% of caregivers used nutrition labels for determining the amount of calories or nutritional content in a food portion, to compare nutrient content for different brands of the same food or to select products low in sugar, fat, and/or sodium.
Our results provide evidence of the need to further explore nutritional label use and design that can better inform caregivers in Guatemala and other middle-income countries. Furthermore, given that the nutrition labels were for the most part rarely used by the participants in our study and that there are low literacy rates, other straightforward, easy-to-use strategies to communicate nutrition information at the point-of-sale could be useful to explore.
肥胖已成为拉丁美洲的一个主要公共卫生问题。营养标签已被提议作为应对肥胖流行的一项策略，因为它们可能会鼓励消费者在购买时重新评估自己的选择。
我们试图确定危地马拉人对营养标签的了解程度及宣称的使用情况。
从危地马拉城的公立和私立学校中随机挑选照顾者。对照顾者进行访谈，以评估与营养标签使用相关的知识和行为。使用标准化程序进行人体测量。采用描述性统计和χ检验来确定不同学校类型之间的差异。
与低收入家庭的照顾者（51%）相比，高收入照顾者（88%）更有可能知晓营养标签（P <.05）。此外，他们比低收入照顾者更频繁地使用营养标签（42.2%对18.3%；P =.03）。不到50%的照顾者使用营养标签来确定一份食物中的卡路里含量或营养成分，比较同一食物不同品牌的营养成分，或选择低糖、低脂肪和/或低钠的产品。
我们的结果表明有必要进一步探索营养标签的使用和设计，以便能更好地让危地马拉及其他中等收入国家的照顾者了解相关信息。此外，鉴于我们研究中的参与者大多很少使用营养标签，且识字率较低，探索其他直接、易用的在销售点传达营养信息的策略可能会很有用。
