Limitations
TLL, ’d
BLIND
Certain inevitable limitations always exist in qualitative studies, and must be considered when interpreting the findings. Usually, mothers are responsible for the purchase of foodstuff in Iranian households. Therefore, we chose to only interview the schoolchildren’s mothers, and not their fathers, who may have held entirely different opinions. Indeed, with the changing landscape of societal expectations around the roles of males and females, it would be pragmatic to evaluate fathers’ perspectives as well in future research. Additionally, we used a variety of dairy products with familiar brands. We’d recommend examining the impact of the PACE label on both familiar and unfamiliar products in future studies.We endeavored to consider every viewpoint presented by the mothers when designing the new label. However, certain ideas, such as the use of all-macro fonts, and/or the inclusion of micronutrients in the labels were not feasible. However, we covered more important and comprehensible details regarding the FSN experts’ opinions. In the new label, we simplified our design, by excluding variables such as age and gender. The primary purpose of this study was to design a label which would help people make healthier food choices. We have facilitated this by using a legible font on a colored label that provides consumers with explicit and concise information.In the quantitative phase, each of the TLL and PACE labels were examined alone and in combination with an educational brochure. To the best of our knowledge, to date, no study has compared PACE and TLL labels in such a way. The main limitation of our study was the one-time exposure to labels, which, particularly in the case of physical activity labels, could have led to its reduced effectiveness as opposed to the TLL. However, the multiplicity of groups, limited time and finances, and difficulty of implementation (lack of school facilities - food spoilage) did not allow us to expose the participants to the labels more than once. Moreover, because the mothers were blind to the purpose of the study, it was practically impossible to expose them several times. Here, the mothers’ education was assessed alone, and their nutritional knowledge was not examined. We therefore recommend evaluating nutritional knowledge in future studies as well. Additionally, it should be noted that physical activity does not eliminate the negative metabolic effects of the food eaten, although our new label also reported higher levels of salt, sugar and fat. Another limitation was that in this study, sampling was done from Tehran. The city accounts for about 10% of the total population of Iran, and due to budget limitations, we could not do it in other cities, but future studies can be done in other provinces as well to ensure the generalizability of results.Finally, we wanted to design a new PACE label. Though we could not predict what the new label would look like at the beginning of the study, we wanted to make sure it was based on the physical activity information needed to burn calories. This new PACE label also contains information on the amount of sugar/sodium/fat (if present), which is shown in red color and the clause “high in sugar/sodium/fat.” Since both the traffic light label and the new label were colored, we think that the color effect was present in both types of labels.