(P05-010-25) Availability of Nutrition Information on Grocery Websites Used to Develop FLIP (Food Label Information and Price) 2023 Branded Food Composition Database

Objectives: Branded food composition databases provide timely information on food nutrition, ingredient and other information to support research and policy initiatives for improving population health. The 2023 Canadian Food Label Information and Price (FLIP) database contains web-scraped information on ~160,000 products from 8 national retailers, with information captured through OCR and foods categorized by pre-trained natural language model algorithms and YOLOv10 for image object detection. The objective of this study was to assess the availability and accessibility of food and beverage nutrition information on the different websites.

Methods: A sample of 105 pre-selected pre-packaged products (national and private label products from all food categories) was searched on 15 major grocery retailer websites across 5 regions in Canada to assess the availability of Nutrition Facts table (NFt), Ingredient List, and allergen declaration information.

Results: Out of 907 products found on websites, 66.9% (n=607/907) displayed all nutrition information – NFts for 74.3% (n=674/907) of products, Ingredient Lists for 86.9% (n=788/907), and allergen declarations for 79.5% (n=325/409). The availability of information varied by website, ranging 9-98% for NFts, 70-94% for Ingredient Lists, and 61-97% for allergen declarations. NFts were most commonly located on pages requiring one or more clicks from the product page, while ingredient and allergen information were most often presented as product images.

Conclusions: The availability and accessibility of nutrition information were not uniformly present across all grocery retailers’ websites and varied widely. To develop a nationally representative branded food composition database, multiple AI/ML and image recognition techniques along with web-scraping information from multiple grocery retailer websites is needed to address gaps and ensure a complete and comprehensive database.

Funding Sources: Canadian Institutes of Health Research Project Grant (PJT 165858)