A pan EU survey of consumer attitudes to food, nutrition and health: an overview

The objective of the study was to investigate attitudes to food, nutrition and health among nationally-representative samples of adults from each member state of the European Union. Overall, 14 331 subjects completed the face-to-face interviewer-assisted questionnaire. A majority of EU subjects believe they do not need to alter their diets, as they perceive them to be already healthly enough. Price may play a significant role in the choice of food for some groups in the population. Furthermore, a lack of knowledge about nutrition is not a commonly cited barrier to healthy eating. Among EU subjects there is general agreement about the sources of information on healthy eating which they use and trust, health professionals are the most trusted source across all member states. The problem facing healthy eating promoters in the EU may not, therefore, be a lack of knowledge, but rather how nutritional guidelines pertain to themselves. For nutrition education programmes to be effective, it is important that strategies be designed which take account of the cultural diversity, thereby reflecting the geographical variability of the EU population as well as being targeted or focused to specific sub-groups in the population.