Page 9 - Nutrinsight-2

Whole grain and health: new evidence • NutrInsight
1.5 Consumers’ perception of whole grain products and associated health claims
Perceived benefits of whole grain products
Part of the HEALTHGRAIN project (Appendix 1) was devoted to exploring consumer attitudes to whole grain products. Interviews with more than 500 consumers in three different countries (UK, Finland, Italy) showed that whole grain foods are perceived as being more natural, healthier, and more nutritionally balanced than refined grain products. However this difference was much more pronounced in Finland which has a whole grain tradition than it was in Italy which does not. The Italians (as opposed to UK and Finland) did not rate the taste higher than refined grain foods [Arvola et al., 2007; Dean et al., 2007].
Figure 3: Perceived benefit of whole grain and refined grain products
Source: HEALTHGRAIN
The results of this survey may stimulate food producers to launch more whole grain products.
Effect of health claims on willingness to buy whole grain products
The HEALTHGRAIN project also examined consumers’ perception of health statements and their impact on consumers’ willingness to buy a whole grain product in four countries (Germany was added to the other three). They compared two types of statements with no statement at all:
• Strong statement: “Contains cereal-based compounds which balance the blood glucose levels and therefore lower the risk of type-2 diabetes.”
• Weak statement: “Promotes regulation of blood sugar balance.”
In general, consumers considered the health statement on the label to indicate the product was healthy but the impact on their likelihood of buying the product varied across countries. Finnish and German consumers were most likely to buy on the prompt of strong health statement but British consumers preferred the weak health statement. The Italians were deterred by both health statements and would prefer to buy products without any health statement about whole grain [Saba et al., 2010]. These results underlined the usefulness of health claims which might, or might not be, used according to consumers’ attitudes within the country.
HEALTHGRAIN Consumer Research
Ratings of refined and whole grain products by country
Interviews of 500 consumers per country
Whole grain: blue
Refined grain: orange
Whole grain is more:
•Natural, Healthy, Nutritionally balanced: Finland > UK > Italy
Small differences in ratings: •Good taste (UK, Fi),
•More expensive.
Whole grain-health perception Bread & pasta > Biscuits
9