The views were diverse, but at the very least, most people want to do right when it comes to the foods they consume.
Financial concerns (33%) proved to be a major (though not the primary) obstacle to healthy eating around the world. The biggest barrier was a perceived time crunch for survey respondents, with 35% of consumers agreeing to the statement, ‘I don’t always eat healthily because I haven’t got time’.
Availability (26%), confusion about which foods are healthy (24%), substandard taste (25%) and the desire to treat oneself (41%) were the other main considerations preventing healthy eating.
Latin Americans were the most likely to cite time constraints as an issue, 5% more than the global norm. Higher cost deterred North American consumers from healthy food choices, with an 11% higher score on this factor than the global average. Ready availability of, and confusion about healthy food, was an issue for about a third of consumers in the regions of Middle East/Africa/Pakistan and Asia Pacific.
North Americans were the most likely to avoid healthy foods because of a belief that they don’t taste as good. Europeans and North Americans both scored highest at 44% and 45% respectively for opting for tasty, non-healthy treats in place of more healthy choices.
Organic foods, which feature production methods that reject synthetic materials and compounds, have gained a fair amount of media attention in recent years. They’re popular with 40% of survey respondents, particularly shoppers in Asia Pacific, where 47% said they buy organic, Latin America at 45% and Middle East/Africa/Pakistan at 43%. North America falls well below the global average, with only 24% of consumers saying they actively buy organic. 35% of Europeans say they actively buy organic products.
People prefer organics for a host of reasons, including:
Asia Pacific shoppers lead the world in saying they buy organic because of the health and nutrition factors, while consumers in the Middle East/Africa/Pakistan region say they opt for organics as they taste better. But North American consumers lead the way on virtually every other criteria, such as avoiding toxins, caring for the environment, keeping GMOs out of their diet, encouraging small farms, acting on principle and rejecting current farming techniques.
Exploring the environmental attributes consumers consider when grocery shopping, the study determined that the most important criteria with global shoppers was the availability of locally made products (33%), stores that participate in fair trade practices (28%) and a selection of organic products (25%).
Other green attributes on the grocery selection radar screen included green or ethical products (24%), products in recycled packaging (23%), farmers market products (21%), short shipping distances (18%), items with little or no packaging (17%) and products not tested on animals (14%).
What’s clear from this survey is that consumers’ hearts are in the right place: they generally want to eat more nutritiously and purchase foods that are grown, raised and produced in responsible ways. That said, when finances are tight, consumers tend to turn to those products that offer the most value, whether they’re healthy and environmentally responsible or not.
Source: The Nielsen Company
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