In the study of Grunert et al. (2009), the health claim perceptions of 4,612 consumers in Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden were studied. Information given in health claims was studied by dividing health claim into components and combining these components in various ways.

Verbal health claims, pictorial health claims and information regarding the presence of wholegrain have positive influences on consumers’ perception of the food product. However, consumers from different European countries don’t have similar perceptions. Finnish consumers seem to be the most positive towards both natural and medical pictorial health claims. Additionally, Finns as well as Germans are highly positive towards verbal health claims. The most contrary attitudes can be found in Italy: while Finns are willing to buy wholegrain products Italians prefer the products without wholegrain.

The Integrated EU Project HEALTHGRAIN aims at producing health promoting and safe cereal foods and ingredients of high eating quality. Whole grain products and the effects of whole grain diet are studied in the 5 year project by 44 organisations from 15 European countries.

PhD Aimo Tiilikainen has started as a senior research scientist and a head of consumer research team at VTT, Espoo, with the task of studying consumer and customer behaviour in the area of foods, ICT, biological materials, etc. Aimo is also coordinating activities in the Nutritech theme "Well-being for consumers". His research activity focuses, for example, on consumer's value - product attribute relationships and how consumers form perceptions of quality, value and buying intention of products.