Journal
BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL
Volume 116, Issue 1, Pages 30-43Publisher
EMERALD GROUP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1108/BFJ-12-2011-0298
Keywords
Consumption; Consumer opinion; Food label; Health information; Label use
Funding
- South African Government's Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme (THEP)
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Purpose - The globally recognised link between diet and health needs to be communicated to consumers to facilitate healthy food choices. Thus, this paper aims to determine South African (SA) metropolitan consumers' opinions and beliefs about the food-health link, as well as their opinions and use of health information on food labels. Design/methodology/approach - A cross-sectional study using fieldworker-administered questionnaires was conducted. Using stratified randomised sampling, 1,997 respondents were recruited. The data were weighted to represent the metropolitan SA adult population (n = 10,695,000). Findings - Practically significantly more respondents agreed than disagreed there is a food-health link and that health messages on food labels are supported by scientific research. Respondents' opinions on health information on food labels were mostly positive, as confirmed by the average opinions for the different ethnic groups. The results identified a lack of interest, time and price concerns, and habitual purchasing as reasons for not reading food labels. Health-concerned respondents also considered labels as important health information sources. Practical implications - Consumer education on the food-health link and the use of health information on food labels should address the deficiencies identified through the opinions and use of food labels by these respondents. Originality/value - Representative results of SA metropolitan consumers in this study are significant since third world countries are burdened by various diseases and former studies only used limited-sized non-probability samples which could not be generalised.
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