Food Nutrients and Ingredients: Attitudinal and Behavioral Trends in Europe

Introduction

European consumers are becoming increasingly health conscious, and are therefore paying closer attention to the nutritional profile of foodsincluding ingredient composition. This puts additional pressure on regional food and beverage manufacturers to respond by reducing or cutting out fat, salt and sugar as well as preservatives, additives and colorings

Scope

• A snapshot of the importance that European consumers attach to diet and nutrition and its impact on food buying habits such as label usage
• Analysis of the major food components such as fats, and European consumers' efforts to exclude, moderate or enhance such elements in their diets
• Covers other pertinent food issues impacting the propensity to consume such as consumer trust, product origin, and food allergens/intolerances
• Covers food and non-alcoholic beverages. Analysis focuses on French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, Russian and UK consumers

Highlights

Maintaining or improving health has become more important to over two-thirds of European consumers in recent years. Accordingly, consumers are trying to make more informed choices by paying greater attention to specific ingredients. This partly explains why nutritional labelling has emerged as such an important topic in food and beverage marketing

In France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, more than 40% of respondents told Datamonitor in April/May 2009 that 'low/no' (added) sugar claims had a 'high' or 'very high' amount of influence on their general food and beverage product choice. This was higher than the equivalent response towards salt claims

Food allergies and intolerance to certain food types is driving an increasing market segment to focus on products which omit certain ingredients in formulation. While gluten-free claims have yet to exert significant influence over a large segment of consumers, allergen-free products are being recognized by a wider audience

Reasons to Purchase

• Understand consumer attitudes and bevaviors regarding the most pertinent macronutrients to help inform product formulation and communication tactics
• Gain deep insight into the changing dietary behaviors of consumers in this highly important regional market
• Access data from two waves of primary research to increase the likelihood of being 'on-trend' with NPD and marketing plans in Europe