Suggested new design for nutritional facts label found on Lebanon products

Abstract

The issue of health is a major concern for most people; therefore, I have chosen a field that combines this concern with my discipline, namely, design. This project will tackle the issue of nutritional facts label design, which has a direct correlation with consumers' health, since, according to the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), the nutritional facts label is the source of information that communicates the serving size and lists the weights of the macronutrients (fats, carbohydrates, protein) of the recommended dietary allowance of a 2000-calorie diet (the average of calories required per day for an adult person). The Lebanese traditional lifestyle is changing at a very fast pace, and the phenomenon of globalization has had a great impact on our food habits; Lebanese traditional cuisine that is characterized as being healthy, with some exceptions, is now being westernized. Thus, the Lebanese diet has changed into pattern described as unhealthy, which is causing a higher risk of non-communicable diseases, such as obesity, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, and hypertension. (1a) Moreover, there are problems related tom the consumer's knowledge of interpretation of the nutritional facts label, which is causing him to take no notice of it. (2a) Another factor related to the shopper is the shortage of time, since we are living in the age of rush, and the nutritional facts label requires time to be recognized and analyzed. (1b) Here comes the problem associated with the nutritional facts label. First its graphical presentation, in terms of typography, iconography, placement on the package and legibility. (2b) A second problem is the math that is required to get the needed numbers to evaluate the products' to consumer requirements. Consequently, my main target is to develop a nutritional facts label nutritional facts label that takes into consideration all those problems, keeping in mind that the main context is Lebanese people; therefore, a suggestion for a Lebanese nutritional facts label to be placed on the Lebanese products will be made. Thus, if the nutritional facts label were more recognizable, then it would contribute to the amelioration of Lebanese people's health. This suggested label would be realized by borrowing aspects of many designs being used, such as the FDA nutritional facts label, the Guideline Daily Amount label (GDA) and traffic light label, and Mc Donald label, and employing them to my own design. From the FDA label, I will get the scientific aspect, from the GDA label the idea of quick and easy snapshot, from the traffic light color coding concept, and from the Mc Donald label the idea of using signs. After borrowing the appropriate aspects of each, a multi-disciplinary study will be done in the field of food anthropology and semiotics, to come up with signs based on the Lebanese culture. Claude Levis Strauss argued that the food serves as a system of signification (Lehrer, 1972), from this concept; I got the idea of using a traditional Lebanese cuisine menu as a basis for the intended nutritional facts label. Subsequent to this, Michael Owen Jones (2007) stipulated that all aspects of foodways are subjects to symbolism, and this initiative could be applied to the presentation and structuring of meals. Consequently, I will borrow this idea, and apply it to the latter to represent the nutritional facts label as a symbol created originally from the traditional Lebanese meals. Accordingly, four design options will be generated for different nutrients and tested to choose the suitable one, keeping in mind the above-mentioned Lebanese aspects. The test will follow the shopping mall intercept (sampling), which is the most widely used market data-gathering technique. A questionnaire will be circulated among the consumers of two supermarkets, at the entrances of each one, at different times of the day, week and month. The design set of the nutrients selected by the majority of the interviewees will be refined and elaborated on for the final layout. On a larger stage, this label was applied on some products as a show case. Some ads were done in the same context, talking a famous Lebanese proverb to convey its message, and to introduce the Lebanese nutritional facts label to the Lebanese audience.