Dr Carien de Jager receives NWO-XS grant to research misleading food packaging

Carien de Jager, assistant professor at the Department of Private Law and Notarial Law at the Faculty of Law, recently received a grant from the NWO SGW Open Competition XS program. De Jager received the grant for her research on misleading food packaging. Her research project is titled “Thinking inside the box: Towards consumers making informed and healthy food choices”.

Assumption and divergent interpretations

Although legislation prohibits misleading food packaging, it is a common problem that hinders consumers from making healthy and informed food choices.

Legally speaking, a food package is misleading if that package as a whole is misleading to “the average consumer”. However, behavioral science research suggests that this legal assumption clashes with what is truly misleading to many consumers. Differing interpretations of deception standards by judges may also create unfair competition among food producers.

Promoting healthy food choices

De Jager's interdisciplinary research project aims to improve EU legislation and case law on misleading food packaging to promote informed and healthy food choices. Comparative law and psychological empirical research will be used to achieve this goal. The project will start in June 2025 and take a year.

NWO SGW Open Competition XS program

The NWO SGW Open Competition XS program selects proposals for curiosity-driven, fundamental research in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). The grant consists of €50,000.

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This article was published by the Faculty of Law.

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