A new study by Nielsen in the Middle East and Africa region showed that only 47% of UAE residents participating in the survey can “decipher” the nutritional information that appears on product labels on store shelves. The rest have no idea what is written there. In Saudi Arabia, the situation is even worse. There, labels on products are “understood” by only 36% of residents.
As the results of the study showed, in this region 38% of respondents believe that their weight is normal, 31% believe that their weight is only slightly higher than normal, and only 4% believe that they are overweight. At the same time, 15% of respondents are convinced that their weight is below normal.
The most knowledgeable from the whole region regarding the understanding of the nutritional information of the products indicated on their labels are South Africans. It is understood by 53% of the surveyed residents of this country. In addition, 28% of respondents from all over the region noted that information on the calorie content of a particular dish should always be indicated only in the menu of fast food establishments; 55% believe that this kind of information should only occasionally appear on the menu.
On a global scale, more than half of consumers (53%) believe that they are overweight, three years ago exactly half of this number of respondents held this opinion. Approximately one third of consumers consider their weight to be normal, although in 2008 the number of such people was 40%, one in ten consumers considers their weight to be excessive. Recall that in an online survey of the Nielsen research company 25 thousand respondents from 56 countries took part.
