Only 49 of 683 adults knew the five-a-day minimum for fruit and vegetables. A Saudi survey asks who actually reads the back of the packet

Almost every packet in a supermarket carries a panel of numbers, and policy makers count on shoppers reading it. Whether they do, and who does, is a different question. A team at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh put it to Saudi adults in an online survey, and published the answers in Frontiers in Nutrition on 29 October.

The questionnaire went out through the researchers' contacts and was passed along on WhatsApp and X in January and February 2026. After removing non-Saudi and under-18 replies, 683 people remained: average age 31, about seven in ten women, three quarters with a diploma or bachelor's degree, and people trained in nutrition left out. Each person rated how often they read labels, used them to compare products, check calories or fat, test marketing claims, plan meals or judge serving size. The nine answers gave a score from 9 to 45. The average was 27.5, roughly 'sometimes'. Everyone also took a nine-question nutrition quiz and rated their own knowledge.

Three things went with reading labels more, after the other factors were taken into account. Each extra right answer on the quiz added about 0.7 points to the label score. A diploma or bachelor's degree added about 1.7 points compared with high school or less, though a postgraduate degree added nothing clear on top. The biggest difference was diet: people not following any particular eating plan scored 2.3 points lower than those who were, whether that plan was for weight loss, muscle, a health condition or general fitness. Age, sex, marriage, income, body weight and long-term illness showed no clear link in the main model. Swapping the quiz for people's own rating of their knowledge gave the same three findings.

The quiz is worth a look on its own. Eight in ten knew potatoes are a starchy food and that herbs and spices add flavour without fat or salt. Only 44% knew fat carries the most calories for the same weight, 30% that whole and skimmed milk hold about the same calcium, and just 7.2%, 49 people, that the minimum is five or more servings of fruit and vegetables a day. The limits are plain, and the authors list them: a one-off survey cannot say whether knowledge leads to label reading or the reverse, people shared the link with friends, so the sample leans young, female and educated, and everything was self-reported. The model explained only about 13% of the spread in label use. Still, the pattern is a useful one for anyone who shops: the label tends to get read when you have a reason to read it, and a little knowledge makes it easier to use.