Recent decades have seen a number of policies have been launched to promote information disclosure on food products marketed in developed countries. There has also been increasing efforts to promote healthy eating in developing economies (Cowburn & Stockley 2005). A good example appears in China, where, in an effort to improve health education, nutrition labels became mandatory under the Nutrition Labeling Act (NLA) since 2013. Additionally, food labeling regulations were issued by India, Mercosur members and South Africa. While nutritional labeling has received a lot of attention both in academia and from the press, there are some key gaps in the nutrition labeling literature. One issue of how standardized information requirements affect firm marketing responses (e.g., advertising levels. R&D investment, and corporate social responsibility programs) and performance has been understudied. Another clear gap in the literature is how nutritional labeling requirements affect developing economies.

This study had carried out to investigate the usage status of customer, the positive effects and problems, and the most important items of the nutrition labeling at purchasing the food etc. on the current nutrition labeling system in order to establish the customer-centric nutrition labeling system. Survey was carried out by questionnaire method that is targeted on adult female above 20 years old in Seoul and Kyeongnam area from May to June, 2004. For the experience of checking the nutrition label of the processed domestic and imported processed food, 82% and 75.4% of the respondents were replied 'have checked' respectively. For the positive effects due to enforcement of the nutrition labeling system, the respondents agreed highly with 'easy to compare with other products' and 'improve the products quality'. For the problems of the nutrition labeling system, the respondents agreed highly with 'different criteria for each product' and 'incendiary purchasing due to false or exaggerated labeling', and gave the higher scale for the positive effects than the problems relatively. For the necessity of the nutrition labeling system, 96.2% of the respondents were replied 'necessary', and it was indicated a significant difference on age and marital status(p<.01). For the price rising due to enforcement of the nutrition labeling system, 55.2% of respondents agreed, and it was indicated a very significant difference on age and monthly income(p<.001). For the most important nutrition labeling items at purchasing the food, the respondents were replied 'total calorie' on most of the food, and in addition, they checked carefully the lipid, cholesterol, protein, Ca, and Fe.

The purposes of this study were to examine understanding, attitudes, and behaviors of college students regarding the nutrition labels of food package and the relations among these factors and demographic background such as educational experience with label, major, home place and parents' status. The study was surveyed 471 undergraduate students enrolled in general education classes at local university. Generally, college students could understand nutrition label. Nutrition related class in college didn't influence Nutrition label understanding, use and purchasing behavior. Students whose mothers with higher than college education level and professional work showed strong dependability on nutrition label. Label use, understanding and purchasing behaviors significantly associated with gender of subjects. All the subjects looked at the amount of sodium most frequently among all the nutrients listed on the food package(88.8%). Of all the food labels, the manufacturing date(25.1%) was considered the most important and the refund and exchange(12.9%) was considered the least important information. This paper suggested that nutrition education program for college students needs to be developed in series from elementary school curriculum and to enhance the use of nutrition labels.