Front-of-package Warning Labels for Sugar Content in Sugar-sweetened Beverages

May 8, 2026 updated by: Marc Chong, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Front-of-package Warning Labels for Sugar Content in Sugar-sweetened Beverages: An Online Randomized Experiment

The goal of this online randomized trial is to examine the effectiveness of Front-of-package (FOP) warning labels for added sugar content on the intent-to-purchases of SSBs in an affluent Asian setting. We hypothesize the FOP warning labels are significantly associated with a reduction of consumers' purchase intention of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs).

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

2800

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Hong Kong residents aged 18 years or older and be able to understand either English or Chinese

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Refuse to provide informed consent
  • Failing an attention check, defined as an incorrect response to a multiple-choice question asking "What month is it currently?",
  • Implausibly short completion times, defined as completing the survey in less than 133 seconds, which corresponds to half of the median completion time observed in pilot data

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: no label (control)
Active Comparator: Hong Kong-style labels
Other: Hong Kong-style labels
Hong Kong-style labels, adapted from the voluntary "Salt / Sugar" Label Scheme for prepackaged food products, displaying "LOW SUGAR" or "NO SUGAR" inside a diamond shape with a tick mark at the bottom
Experimental: UK-style traffic light labels
Other: UK-style traffic light labels
UK-style traffic light labels displaying "HIGH ADDED SUGAR" in a red circle, "MEDIUM ADDED SUGAR" in a yellow circle, "LOW ADDED SUGAR" in a green circle, or "ZERO ADDED SUGAR" in a green circle
Experimental: Chile-style octagonal labels
Other: Chile-style octagonal labels
Chile-style octagonal labels displaying "HIGH ADDED SUGAR"
Experimental: text warning labels
Other: text warning labels
text warning labels stating that drinking beverages with added sugar contributes to diabetes and tooth decay, applied to low-, medium-, and high-added-sugar beverages
Experimental: text-and-graphic warning labels
Other: text-and-graphic warning labels
text-and-graphic warning labels displaying the same message as the text warning label with simple graphics representing diabetes and tooth decay, applied to low-, medium-, and high-added-sugar beverages
Experimental: teaspoon labels
Other: teaspoon labels
teaspoon labels showing the number of teaspoons of added sugar per 100 mL, applied to all added-sugar levels

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Proportion of the participant selects a sugar-sweetened beverage in the beverage choice task
Time Frame: Enrollment
Enrollment

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Estimated)

May 1, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

April 30, 2027

Study Completion (Estimated)

April 30, 2028

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 30, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 30, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

May 6, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 12, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 8, 2026

Last Verified

May 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • SBRE-24-0209

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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