Promoting healthy diet, improving food safety, and reducing domestic food waste are high priorities for the EU and the UK. Improvement is needed because (1) consumers are increasingly making unhealthy food choices,... [ view full abstract ]
Promoting healthy diet, improving food safety, and reducing domestic food waste are high priorities for the EU and the UK. Improvement is needed because (1) consumers are increasingly making unhealthy food choices, contributing to 62% of UK adults being overweight or obese, (2) foodborne illnesses amount to 17 million cases/year in the UK, and (3) UK domestic food waste is 7 million tons/year, of which 4.2 million tons is deemed preventable. These issues have taken on a new and pressing dimension in the face of ever growing global population and increasing environmental and sustainability concerns. Consumers face complex decisions about nutrition, food safety, and food waste, and their interactions. However, expert knowledge about these domains lacks the integration that would be needed to develop effective communications to encourage better choices. We examined this gap by interviewing experts from the domains of nutrition, food safety, and food waste and summarized their perspectives of the interactions between these domains, and their relevance for informing consumers’ food choices. Accordingly, 24 domain experts working in European and US universities, government agencies, and major retailers were interviewed by using a teleconferencing facility. The interviews were grounded in the ‘mental models approach, which draws on interview methods from cognitive psychology, ethnography and has been applied in diverse domains including health, environment and food safety. We report on three main findings. First, our expert participants indicated that consuming smaller portions, using more frozen food, and improving culinary skills may improve healthy eating and food safety practices, while reducing food waste. Second, they identified major problems with existing communications about food, such as the proliferation of inconsistent information from competing sources, and consumers’ consistent confusion about labels, in particular expiry date labelling. Third, they suggested integrating research and policy-related activities across these domains to improve communications. We will discuss our findings in light of research and practice in risk communication. We will also suggest further research to develop communications that promote consumption of healthy and safe food with minimum waste.
