Understanding how consumers categorise health related claims on foods : a consumer-derived typology of health-related claims

Hodgkins, Charo E. (author), Egan, Bernadette M. (author), Peacock, Matthew (author), Klepacz, Naomi (author), Miklavec, Krista (author), Pravst, Igor (author), Pohar, Jurij (author), Gracia, Azucena (author), Groeppel-Klein, Andrea (author), Rayner, Mike (author), Raats, Monique (author)

The Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (NHCR) EC No 1924/2006 aims to provide an appropriate level of consumer protection whilst supporting future innovation and fair competition within the EU food industry. However, consumers’ interpretation of health claims is less well understood. There is a lack of evidence on the extent to which consumers are able to understand claims defined by this regulatory framework. Utilising the Multiple Sort Procedure (MSP), a study was performed (N = 100 participants across five countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and the United Kingdom) to facilitate development of a framework of health-related claims encompassing dimensions derived from consumers. Our results provide useful insight into how consumers make sense of these claims and how claims may be optimised to enhance appropriate consumer understanding. They suggest consumers may not consciously differentiate between a nutrition claim and a health claim in the way that regulatory experts do and provide insight into where this might occur. A consumer-derived typology of health-related claims based on three key dimensions is proposed: (1) Familiarity with the nutrient, substance or food stated in the claim; (2) statement type in terms of simplicity/complexity; (3) relevance of the claim, either personally or for a stated population group.

• Language: English
• Keywords: nutrition claims, health claims, consumer understanding, multiple sort procedure, health claim typology
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: BF - Biotechnical Faculty
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2019
• Number of pages: 31 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 11, iss. 3, art. 539
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-132358
• UDC: 612.39
• ISSN on article: 2072-6643
• DOI: 10.3390/nu11030539
• COBISS.SI-ID: 39952133
• Publication date in RUL: 22.10.2021

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Nutrients
• Shortened title: Nutrients
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2072-6643
• COBISS.SI-ID: 2948140

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 02.03.2019

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: prehrana, nutricija, zdravje, potrošniki

Projects

• Funder: EC - European Commission
• Funding programme: FP7
• Project number: 311963
• Name: Role of health-related claims and symbols in consumer behaviour
• Acronym: CLYMBOL