Food firms responsible for healthy diets, claim consumers

When asked how much responsibility they believed food and drink companies had for ensuring they ate a healthy diet, more than half (52%) said they had ‘a lot’, and a further 37% said they had ‘some’.

Only one-in-10 (9%) of the 1,300 consumers polled worldwide thought food and drink companies had no responsibility at all.

However, consumers in western countries were much less likely to place the burden of responsibility on food companies than in Asia.

East-west divide​

Just 39% of the westerners surveyed said food companies had a lot of responsibility for ensuring they had a healthy diet, compared with 68% in Asia.

Trust in food and drink companies was also an issue, the survey by PR agency Ingredient Communications revealed.

When asked to rank seven different sources of information about health and nutrition by their trustworthiness, 41% of consumers placed them in either last or in second-to-last place, and only 5% put them top.

Globally, doctors and other healthcare professionals were the most trusted, with 72% of consumers ranking them either highest or second highest.

Trust in government and health authorities​

After doctors, respondents put the most trust in government and health authorities (ranked top by 23%) and friends and family (15%). The list also included celebrities, celebrity chefs, journalists and bloggers.

Trust in food and drink companies was the highest in the US, where 14% of consumers ranked them above any other source of information.

“Our research makes clear the scale of the challenge facing the food industry,”​ Ingredient Communications director Richard Clarke said.