Consumer Focused Review of Food Behaviours

• Project start date: 17 January 2012
• Project status: Completed
• Project type: Food safety
• Discipline: Food reviews
• Author/s: Safefood internal research

Research objective

The aims of this project were to understand consumer food behaviours and to provide evidence to inform research, policies, practices and communications for changing consumer food safety and dietary behaviour on the island of Ireland.

This research used qualitative and quantitative methods to identify key influences, barriers and promoters of food safety and healthy eating behaviours. The report provides an overview of the current understanding of the environmental, socio-economic and personal factors that influence food behaviour on the island of Ireland and the knowledge gaps that exist in this regard. It also investigates what best practice is in communicating to influence behavioural change, especially among vulnerable groups.

Outputs

Research report

• Title: Consumer food behaviours
• Publication date: 13 October 2012
• Summary: The primary aim of this report is to inform the research, policies and practices of all those working towards changing consumer food safety and dietary behaviour on the island of Ireland.
• Findings:
  • There was little data on the wider environmental influences on consumer food safety behaviour on the island of Ireland.
  • While people have a good knowledge of food safety behaviour, and a high level of risk perception, best practice food hygiene behaviours are not always implemented.
  • The mismatch between knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of food safety and actual behaviour requires further study.
  • Survey data shows that the diets of children and adults are not in keeping with the public health nutrition guidelines.
  • People were conflicted about healthy eating. Many understand healthy eating and know what it means, know about the longer-term benefits, find it important and are concerned about nutrition issues.
  • On a day-to-day basis, health is not really the main concern. People have busy lives, and food is used sometimes to simply keep going, or for a myriad of other purposes including emotional and social reasons.
  • Barriers to healthy eating included time, food preferences, cost, lack of willpower, and the perceived difficulty of making changes.
  • Focus group participants discussed the ready availability of fast foods and convenience foods and felt that the food market is weighted against healthy eating.
  • Added to this is a widespread perception among consumers that that their diets are already healthy enough and a belief that they can regulate their diet despite opposing influences.
• Recommendations:

  Overall, intervening simultaneously at an individual and environmental level is more likely to bring about sustained change.

  Multi-component campaigns that implement change in a variety of different settings show most promise for future research.

Similar research

• Consumer focused review of men’s food behaviour (2014)
• Consumer focused review of the fruit and vegetable food chain (2013)
• Consumer focused review of the chicken food chain (2012)