Consumers are often driven to purchase food products according to the nutritional contents mentioned in the food packaging. They decide on whether to buy it or not considering the value of calorie, fat, protein, carbohydrate, vitamin, or mineral content. The other details which consumers look upon are ingredients that may bring up allergic reactions. Since these are a highly influencing factor, it is important to give accurate listing of nutritional elements included in a particular food or it might mislead the consumers. This led to dedicated studies and potential differences between claims mentioned on the packaging and original nutritional content have been found. A highly misleading strategy followed by food manufacturing companies are by highlighting either the presence of positive elements or the absence of negative elements. "We found that consumers had a more positive attitude toward claims that are based on the presence of something good, compared to claims that are about the absence of something bad.", said Study co-author Prof. Pierre Chandon, INSEAD. When positive components are displayed on the front of packaging, people feel that the food is healthy and promotes weight loss even though it is never mentioned in particular and also, people are mostly staying ignorant of the unmentioned negative attributes.
