Background
The WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety (NFS) has initiated work on the development of guidance on menu labelling and portion size control, which aims to enhance healthier decisions in the out-of-home food environment and to address increasing concerns of consuming out-of-home meals and foods.
During the last few years in particular due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the out-of-home food sector market has grown rapidly and its important role in contributing to shape people’s dietary practices is increasingly recognized. A growing evidence base suggests that the nutritional content of food available in the out-of-home food environment is higher in energy, saturated fats, sugars and salt, and is also likely to be sold in larger portion sizes. However, many consumers are often unaware of the nutrient contents of the foods being made available or offered in the out-of-home environment. Therefore, left unregulated, the out-of-home food environment may increasingly pose a threat to consumer health.
The aim of this scoping review on menu labelling and portion size control in the out-of-home food environment is to assess the scope of the existing literature and the nature and extent of available evidence on menu labelling and portion size control as a policy option to address increasing concerns of consuming out of home meals and foods.
Responding to the call for authors
Interested authors and research teams are invited to submit a proposal (2-3 pages) no later than 10 August 2022, by sending an email to WHO at NFS@who.int. The subject heading of the email should read as: “Scoping review on menu labelling”.
Scope of work for review
- Settings of interest: Out-of-home food environment, including (but not limited to):
- restaurants, coffee shops and bars
- takeaway stores
- street-food outlets
- food to go from retail stores (including supermarkets and convenience stores)
- food ordered through food delivery apps
- Menu labelling can refer to: menu board signposting, shelf labels or labels on foods served, labelling provided on delivery apps, or delivered food
- The review should identify, quantify and map the types and sources of evidence available in the peer-reviewed literature, and include a summary of identified research gaps. The scoping review can build off any existing high-quality systematic reviews
- Preferably, there should be no date or language restrictions in search strategy
- No restrictions to geographic areas in search strategy
Qualifications of the author(s) / review team
- Interested author(s)/teams must have experience with conducting literature reviews, including scoping review and systematic reviews and should provide references of reviews that they have published in peer-review journals.
- Interested author(s)/teams should have strong proficiency in English and members with complementary skills and competencies including knowledge of the technical area, statistical analysis and excellent writing capabilities.
The proposal should contain the following:
- Contact information of the lead author and host institution with overall responsibility for the review, and contributors. The specific competencies and contributions of each author or team member should be explicitly stated.
- CV including publication list for the team lead and any of the major contributors.
- Proposed question(s) to be addressed through the reviews, outlining the background and justification for the review, the search strategy and databases to be searched, process of data extraction and analytical approach. This description should reflect the scope of work described above. Successful authors will be required to submit a protocol prior to performing the review;
- Proposed budget (US $). This should outline the total amount for the scoping review including an approximate breakdown of personnel vs. institutional/other costs. For the purpose of the concept note, it is not necessary to describe every detail of the systematic review.
- Basic timeline covering the major milestones of the work, noting that the review must be completed by 15 November 2022.