Consumer perceptions of date labelling and storage advice and its relationship with food waste: A systematic scoping review of the academic & grey literature

Abstract

• Reducing household food waste requires accurate and informative advice on food packaging. • Consumers' varied relationships with date labels reveal their complex motivations and confusion. • Consumer-centred date labels and storage advice support informed decision-making about food. • Studies on date labels and food waste overlook visual communication's role in consumer confusion. • Future studies should explore visual cues, global south contexts, and labels’ role in food waste. Consumer food waste has significant impacts worldwide. Consumers are confused about date labels and are discarding food that is still edible. Inconsistent storage advice contributes to confusion and prevents consumers from properly storing food. This paper examines consumer perceptions and understanding of date labels and on-pack storage advice and how they make decisions about food. A systematic scoping review was undertaken to comprehensively search for existing scholarly and grey literature. Results show that consumers find date labels confusing and hard to understand. The confusion and difficulty are due to interpretation, inconsistent placement, poor legibility, and different label-type meanings. Furthermore, the study did not identify any articles that studied the impact of visual semiotics (i.e., visual cues) of packaging or labels on consumer decision-making about food that leads to household food waste. Of 92 papers, 38 explored the relationship between date labelling and food waste. Six papers explored storage advice in conjunction with food waste. Future research should focus on: 1) understanding packaging design's role in reducing food waste, including visual cues that reduce cognitive load and complexity, 2) studying how Global South countries address consumer food waste, and 3) exploring system tensions and opportunities to improve labels and packaging to reduce consumer food waste. The review establishes that the outcome of consumer confusion is household food waste. By understanding what causes consumer confusion and influences consumer choices, we can improve existing date label and storage advice systems to enable consumers to make informed decisions about food waste more easily.

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