Chile Law of Food Labelling and Advertising (black 'ALTO EN' warning octagons)
Also: Ley 20.606 sobre composición nutricional de los alimentos y su publicidad · Ley de Etiquetado
From June 2016 Chile required black stop-sign warnings ('ALTO EN AZÚCARES', sodium, saturated fat, calories) on packaged foods over set thresholds, banned child-directed marketing of those products and their sale in schools: the first national policy to combine the three.
- Years
- 2016–now
- Country
- Chile
- Topic
- Nutrition
- Asks people to
- StopSubstitute
- Strategy
- Policy pairedSimple instructionWarning label
- Channel
- PackagingPoint of saleSchool
- Audience
- General publicParentsYouth
Evidence
ObservationalPositive
Taillie et al. (2020), Kantar household panel (n=2,383), 2015-17 against pre-trend counterfactual: purchases of 'high-in' beverages fell 22.8 mL/capita/day (-23.7%), their calories fell 27.5%, and total beverage calories fell 7.5%; similar absolute falls across education groups. Cannot separate labels from marketing and school rules, or reformulation from behaviour change. Rebolledo et al. (2022): purchases of beverages with non-nutritive sweeteners rose (+25.4 mL/person/day). Paraje et al. (2022): no effect on food-sector employment and negligible effect on wages or margins.
Sponsor (who paid)
- Ministerio de Salud de Chile Foreign government, regulator
Credits (who made it)
Not recorded yet.
Sources
- Taillie LS et al. An evaluation of Chile's Law of Food Labeling and Advertising on sugar-sweetened beverage purchases from 2015 to 2017: a before-and-after study. PLoS Med 2020;17(2):e1003015 evaluation · 2020 · DOI 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003015 · PMID 32045424
- Rebolledo N et al. Sweetener purchases in Chile before and after implementing a policy for food labeling, marketing, and sales in schools. Curr Dev Nutr 2022;7(2):100016 evaluation · 2022 · DOI 10.1016/j.cdnut.2022.100016 · PMID 37180088
- Paraje G et al. Front-of-pack labeling in Chile: effects on employment, real wages, and firms' profits after three years of its implementation. Nutrients 2022;14(2):295 evaluation · 2022 · DOI 10.3390/nu14020295 · PMID 35057474
Research notes
Abstracts read via PubMed 2026-10-22. A policy, not an ad campaign; included because the octagon is a mandated mass message on every pack and was copied by Peru, Uruguay, Mexico (2020) and others. 'Elige Vivir Sano' is a separate Chilean government healthy-living programme (not covered here; no evaluation found in this pass). Law number and the 'ALTO EN' wording are from memory and should be checked against the Ministry page. Strategy 'warning-label' is a new id (see report).
Record cases/chile-food-labelling-law.json, updated 2026-10-22· Link to this campaign