RESEARCHERS are investigating the extent to which consumers use traffic-light nutrition labelling when choosing food.

The project is being conducted by the Countryside and Community Research Unit of the University of Gloucestershire, in collaboration with London-based creative designer Hayden Peek.

They want to know whether an alternative receipt-based summary may be a more useful tool for consumers when deciding what food to buy.

Matt Cole, a senior lecturer in sport, exercise & health nutrition at the university, said: "This is an innovative approach to nutritional information on till receipts in shops.

"To help us carry out the research, we would like as many people as possible to take part in our online survey, which only takes a few minutes to complete.

"All data will remain anonymous and will only be used for research purposes."

Food labels can contain so much information that it's often difficult to know what it all means as we hurry around the supermarket to make the family food purchases.

Some labelling, which may suggest 'healthy' food, is ambiguous. Some products are marked "reduced fat", some "low fat". And sugar is not always listed in the ingredients as "sugar".

This can all be confusing to the consumer.

With this in mind, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) developed the traffic-light nutrition labelling system to help consumers make healthier choices more quickly and easily.

Located on the front of packaging, the traffic-light system allows consumers to see whether foods are high (red), moderate (amber) or low (green) in fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt.

But whil the system is used on individual food packaging, many consumers have little knowledge or understanding as to the general healthiness or otherwise of their overall purchases.

The link to the survey is https://glos.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/traffic-light-nutrition.

The online survey is open until 10 June.