NEW RESEARCH RESULTS: Health claims have an influence on consumer perceptions

Monday, 09 November 2009 12:03

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.

These results are from a new publication accepted in Food Quality and Preference. The study aimed to explore the impact of health-related messages on the perceived overall healthiness and likelihood to buy cereal-based products or non-cereal products containing beneficial compounds from grains. The data were collected from a sample of 2392 over 35 years old consumers in Finland, Germany, Italy and the UK. This study was a part of HealthGrain-project.

Reference: Saba, A., Vassallo, M., Shepherd, R., Lampila, P., Arvola, A., Dean, S., Winkelmann, M., Claupein, E., Lähteenmäki., L. Country-wise differences in perception of health-related messages in cereal-based food products. Food Quality and Preference, In Press.

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