What impact do tobacco-style health warning labels have when applied to alcohol and food products, and how acceptable might they be? - BMC Series blog

What impact do tobacco-style health warning labels have when applied to alcohol and food products, and how acceptable might they be? - BMC Series blog

Emily Pechey & Gareth J. Hollands

Emily Pechey is a Research Assistant in the Behaviour and Health Research Unit in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on investigating the effectiveness of behavior change interventions for promoting healthier lifestyles.

Dr Gareth J. Hollands is a researcher at the University of Cambridge, and an Investigator on the Behaviour Change by Design program www.behaviourchangebydesign.iph.cam.ac.uk. His research focuses on developing and evaluating interventions that change aspects of physical environments to change health-related behaviors. Twitter @GJHollands.

What impact do tobacco-style health warning labels have when applied to alcohol and food products, and how acceptable might they be?

Health warning labels (HWLs) using images that depict the negative health consequences of tobacco consumption can encourage smokers to quit. But should we consider using them on other products that harm our health, namely alcohol and foods high in fat, sugar or salt? In this blog, the authors summarize their new research published in BMC Public Health

Emily Pechey & Gareth J. Hollands 2 Apr 2020

Flickr: PressReleaseFinder

Public health bodies have suggested that tobacco-style HWLs should be considered for application to alcohol and high calorie snack products. However, evidence for their potential usefulness in these contexts is limited, with prior research typically focusing on sugary drinks, or using smaller or less representative samples. This led us to run two large-scale studies in general populations to examine the potential effectiveness and acceptability of image-and-text HWLs on alcohol and snack foods