When shoppers at German supermarkets pause to examine a product's price tag, what catches their eye matters enormously—and researchers at Göttingen University have just proven that vibrant color beats gray every single time. In a carefully controlled eye-tracking study, scientists tested how consumers interact with Nutri-Score labels, the five-color nutrition system used across Europe to help people make healthier food choices. The findings, published in Food Quality and Preference, reveal that colorful traffic-light labels on shelf price tags attract far more attention than their grayscale counterparts—and that attention directly influences what ends up in the shopping basket.
The Nutri-Score system itself is elegantly simple: dark green A signals favorable nutrition, yellow C sits in the middle, and red E warns of less favorable nutritional profiles. Since its adoption in countries like Germany and the Netherlands, some supermarkets have experimented with printing the label in gray on price tags, presumably to save costs or maintain visual consistency. But Isabelle Weiß, the lead researcher on the project, and her colleagues at Göttingen—collaborating with Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences, the German Institute of Food Technology, and Giessen University—wanted to know if that grayscale approach actually works.
They invited 199 German consumers into a simulated supermarket experience and divided them into four groups, each seeing a different labeling arrangement: colorful Nutri-Score on both package and price tag, grayscale on both, the current supermarket standard (colorful on package only), or no label at all. Using eye-tracking technology, the researchers measured exactly where participants looked, how long they lingered, and ultimately which products they selected. The results were striking. The colorful version on price tags captured consumer attention far more frequently and for significantly longer durations than the gray version. When shoppers frequently glimpsed the dark green A or sunny yellow C, they were far more likely to choose that product. But the red E, despite being intended as a warning signal, failed to deter purchases—even when consumers looked at it repeatedly, the products still landed in their baskets.
"The greater visibility of the labels can make it easier to compare products and support people in making more health-conscious choices," Weiß explains. The implication is clear: color matters as much as content. For consumers navigating supermarket aisles with limited time and attention, a vibrant traffic-light label that practically jumps off the shelf offers genuine guidance. Dr. Clara Mehlhose, the study leader, reinforced the point: "The Nutri-Score is intended to provide simple guidance in the supermarket. It is crucial that shoppers can recognize and understand the information at a glance."
The research underscores a broader truth about food labeling: placement and design are not superficial details but fundamental to whether a label actually changes behavior. Policymakers and retailers across Europe now have evidence that if they want the Nutri-Score to fulfill its promise—helping people choose nutritionally sound foods—they should prioritize colorful, visible placement on both front packages and shelf price tags. In an era where many struggle to make healthy choices amid overwhelming product options, this small intervention in how information is presented could have genuine public health ripples.