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The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has carried out research to find out people’s attitudes towards food and health. The results of the survey-based study revealed some interesting statistics. For example, only 2% of respondents were completely vegetarian, and 0% were vegan - who is the FSA talking to?! Ok, maybe that’s only relevant to me. More surprising was the decrease in concern about food issues:

There was a decrease in concern about healthy eating (in the broader context of major issues facing people today), about food safety at the general level (a decrease in the proportion either ‘very concerned’ or ‘concerned’ from 60% in 2006 to 57% in 2007) and also about specific food issues (e.g. the amount of fat, salt and sugar in food). There was also a decline in the number of parents who claimed to be trying to reduce their children’s consumption of fat, salt and sugar, compared to 2006.

Here’s another one that surprised me:

34% agree that it’s difficult to find healthy alternatives that taste nice.

That just makes me sad.

Some more interesting, but perhaps not terribly surprising, factoids:

• Eating healthily was less important for men than women (with respectively 55%
  and 62% strongly agreeing) and for 16-25 year-olds compared to all older age
  groups (only 46% of the youngest age group agreed strongly with this statement,
  compared to around 60% among each older age cohort).
• Women were also more likely to agree that they tried to encourage other people
  to eat healthily whenever they could (71% agreed, compared to 54% of men).
• Ingredients had less relevance to the 16-25 year-olds - only 28% of this group
  strongly agreed that the most important thing was to cook with high quality
  ingredients without additives or preservatives, compared to at least 45% of each
  older age group.

Wanna read more scary statistics? Check out the full report.

Attitude to health affects eating habits
Consumer Attitudes Survey 2007: UK Report

Related posts:

1. Raw Food Diet: You Are What You Eat
2. Hunger, Stress and Other Roadblocks to Healthy Eating
3. The mathematics of good habits
4. Should the FDA set limits on salt content?
5. Evolutionary Fitness: What do you think?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 9:03 pm by monica and is filed under Diet, Link, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.