Labels can largely influence functional foods consumers' purchase decisions. The aim of the work was to
study consumers' attention to functional food labels and to evaluate differences between regular and
functional products probiotic milk as case study. Four labels were designed considering two types of
product (regular milk vs. probiotic milk) and two label backgrounds. Sixty consumers were asked to look
at the labels while their eye movements were recorded using an eye-tracker and to complete a word
association task. Then, they had to complete eight flicker change detection tasks, involving four different
changes on key aspects of the labels (brand, type of product, type of microorganism and health claim) for
each label background. Visual processing of the labels was not largely affected by the type of product and
label design. Health claims were not comprehensively processed, probably due to the high information
density of this area. Besides, consumers' health-related associations were generated by graphic design
and not by the functional aspect of the products, suggesting that graphic design plays a key role in
shaping health-related associations. Recommendations for the design of functional food labels are
discussed.