Unpacking the Impact of Nutri‐Score on Consumer Choices in Italy: Evidence From a Menu Planning Experiment

Overnutrition is a major public health concern, and front-of-pack labels (FOPLs) have been introduced to support healthier food choices. Within the European Union, the coexistence of multiple voluntary schemes across Member States has fuelled the policy debate on a harmonized mandatory FOPL. In this context, Nutri-Score (NS) is among the most extensively studied interpretive labels, yet evidence remains limited on how it affects meal composition and cross-category substitution. We investigate these issues through an online within-subject experiment with 202 Italian consumers, who completed a menu-planning task first without (R1) and then with NS information (R2). The display of NS shifted choices toward healthier options, with the strongest effects at the extremes of the scale: selections of NS D products decreased substantially in the Proteins and Fats macro-category (−20.8%), whereas NS A choices increased (+17.3%). Beyond product-level shifts, NS altered meal composition strategies, increasing the frequency of “healthy–healthy” combinations and reducing “healthy–unhealthy” pairings. Improvements were often achieved through category switching rather than within-category substitutions, particularly in Proteins and Fats, where consumers reduced cheese choices (−9.0%) and increased plant-based alternatives (+10.4%). These findings confirm NS effectiveness in guiding healthier choices in a meal-planning context, while highlighting potential side effects of simplified ratings and limited within-category variability, including category avoidance with implications for dietary diversity and affected sectors.