Only 15.5% of adolescents never read food labels before purchase in 2017
According to the Adolescents Nutrition Survey NHMS conducted in 2017, 15.5% of adolescents in Malaysia does not read food labels at all when buying or receiving food/drink.
The survey revealed the factors of why adolescents are not reading food labels, they are ‘not interested’, ‘do not understand’, ‘time constraint’, ‘did not know the importance’, ‘small font’ and ‘already aware’.
In Malaysia, Melaka records the highest percentage of adolescents not reading food labels before when buying or receiving at 19.9%, whereas Terengganu records the least at 10.0%.
Majority of Malaysian adolescents do read the food label. More than 50% them answered occasionally or once in a while reading food labels when purchasing while 33.2% answered ‘Yes, Always’. But, do these adolescents understand what they read?
Nevertheless, majority of the adolescents has already been reading the food label. Next, parents or teachers can start to educate them to understand better on what was written on the food label.