Consumer Awareness of the Degree of Industrial Food Processing and the Association with Healthiness—A Pilot Study

Abstract

Consumption of ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) has been associated with lower diet quality, obesity, and adverse health effects. Not much is known about how consumers evaluate the degree of processing of a food product and how they relate this to healthiness. An online questionnaire was completed by a total of 277 Dutch, 204 Italian, and 181 Brazilian consumers. Consumers were aged 18–65 year, mean 38 ± 13 year, 31% were males, and 71% were highly educated. Pictures of several common food products were evaluated on the degree of industrial processing and healthiness. Thirteen food categories were included, each including one minimally processed food (MPF), one High NS_UPF (Nutri-Score A or B), and one Low NS_UPF (Nutri-Score D or E). Lastly, knowledge and attitude about UPFs were assessed. Ultraprocessing was perceived as unhealthy by the majority of consumers (Dutch, Italian: 55%; Brazilian: 75%) and contributed to weight gain according to: 38% Dutch, 51% Italian, and 70% Brazilian consumers. Low NS_UPFs were correctly rated toward “processed” and “not healthy” in all countries. High NS_UPF were rated as processed but showed large variations in healthiness scores. In conclusion, consumers rated UPFs relatively low in healthiness compared with MPFs with similar Nutri-Scores within the same food category. These preliminary findings suggest that consumers incorporate, to some extent, the degree of industrial processing while assessing the healthiness of food products.

Exploring consumer perceptions and familiarity on apple production and processing under different conditions: conventional, organic, home-made, artisanal and industrial

“…The results from these three examples confirm that there is a limited knowledge of consumers about food processing (Bolhuis et al. , 2022), however they have different perceptions and expectations from the processing conditions.…”

“…The results from these three examples confirm that there is a limited knowledge of consumers about food processing (Bolhuis et al, 2022), however they have different perceptions and expectations from the processing conditions. For consumers industrially processed foods are highly different from artisanal and home-made food processing, which are perceived by them having less additives and processing steps.…”

How Promising Are “Ultraprocessed” Front-of-Package Labels? A Formative Study with US Adults

“…The concept of UPF is complex, and the effect of an "ultraprocessed" label may depend on consumers' understanding of it. A few qualitative studies in Latin America have found that the idea conveyed by the term "ultraprocessed" is reasonably well understood and associated with unhealthfulness [64][65][66], while studies in Europe have uncovered more variation in clarity about the concept [67,68]. Although, to our knowledge, no studies have assessed understanding of the term among US consumers yet, one study has shown that the perception of more processed foods as less healthful is lower among US consumers compared to consumers in Canada, Australia, the UK, and Mexico [69].…”

Perspective on the consumption of ultra-processed foods among university students

“…The commercialization of ultra -processed foods (UPF) worldwide is constantly growing, despite the fact that consumers know that they can be harmful to health [1]. Their consumption is associated with poor diet quality, but there is little information on how consumers estimate the level of food processing and how much influence they have on health [2 ]. The perception of ultra -processed foods is negative, to the point that they are often referred to as unreal foods [3], so different industries seek to reduce the caloric content of their ultra -processed foods by creating new formulas and replacin g caloric sugars with calorie-free sweeteners to thus change consumers' perception of how harmful their product they consume is [4].…”