Food safety and nutrition: Improving consumer behaviour

Consumer awareness of food safety and nutrition is a major issue in relation to healthy lifestyles and disease prevention. Improper consumer food management has been implicated in a large number of cases of foodborne illnesses. To reduce the risk of foodborne illness, consumers must be willing to change behaviours that are not consistent with safe food storage and preparation practices. Change in such behaviours is strongly related to consumer knowledge of proper food handling practices. At the same time there is public consciousness of the role of diet in contributing to the health status, but this awareness has not led to sufficient improvement of eating habits. What people buy and eat and the way they manage food depends not only on the individual but also on social, cultural, economic, and environmental factors. Identifying an effective strategy to improve consumers' behaviour is a concern for politicians and health promoters. Non-targeted spreading of generic information is one strategy, but seems to be relatively unsuccessful. This paper describes an innovative and effective methodology to improve the level of consumer awareness towards healthier food choices and safer behaviours based on a holistic approach. This strategy could be adopted to better disseminate information regarding healthy foods on a large scale and at a relatively low cost, obtaining significant benefits in terms of primary prevention and contributing to the amelioration of food management at the consumer level. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.