Our seventh consumer attitudes survey

Thursday 22 February 2007

The 2006 survey reveals that healthy eating is a key concern for consumers, with many people checking labels for nutritional information on a regular basis as well as an increasing awareness of 5-a-day messaging.

The 2006 survey highlights a number of diet and health trends that have emerged since 2000. These include:

• A significant yearly increase in the number of consumers who are aware that they should eat at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables each day. Almost an additional third of consumers are now aware that they should eat at least 5-a-day compared to 2000.
• As in previous years, the amount of fat, salt and sugar in food continues to be key issues of concern for consumers. Salt was mentioned by over half of the UK sample and fat and sugar each by more than two fifths of respondents when prompted with a list of possible concerns.
• A large number of consumers say they look at nutritional information on food labels to check the fat and salt content when purchasing products for the first time.
• Almost half of consumers claim to be trying to increase their consumption of fresh fruit. Almost two fifths were trying to increase the amount of vegetables they eat and almost a quarter of consumers were trying to up their consumption of salads.
• Three fifths of consumers agreed that they would like to have more information about the food that they buy, with almost half saying that they find it difficult to know if a product is healthy from the label.
• Two fifths of consumers who said they snacked in between meals, claimed to have snacked on fresh fruit. However almost a third snacked on biscuits/cakes and a further fifth snacked on crisps/savoury snacks.

You can check the results for your region by clicking on the map below.