Promoting Public Health through Alternative Regulatory Strategies. The Rise of Behaviourally Informed Food Law

After briefly recalling the main reasons for using Nudging methods in public health promotion, the article illustrates the increasing consideration of Behavioural Insights in crafting more precise and effective health policy solutions at EU level. It describes two examples of behaviourally informed actions for the promotion of healthier diets within the food labelling regulation. The first example describes one the most paradigmatic applications of Nudging in the food labelling domain: the traffic light nutrition labelling promoted in the UK. The second shows how Behavioural Insights have contributed to the implementation of the EU food labelling legislation on the topic of Trans Fatty Acid (TFA). Finally, it sums up some considerations regarding both the influence of the application of the findings of behavioural sciences to the use of coercion in achieving public health goals and the dawn of a new horizon for EU food law.