What is Natural Food Anyway?

At little over a month ago, I discussed some of the ongoing legal challenges that are swirling around "natural" claims on foods.  One of the big challenges is that the word "natural" is nebulous and is vaguely defined by regulators.   

I thought I'd try to shed a little light on the subject by making use of the survey project I just started and asking consumers what they think the word means.  In June, I added two questions to the survey.  The first question listed 10 statements and individuals had to place them in a box that said "I believe foods containing this ingredient are natural" or one that said "I DO NOT believe foods containing this ingredient are natural."  The order of items was randomized across respondents (sample size is 1,004, demographically weighted to match the US population, sampling error is about +/- 3%).  

The results indicate that most people think added cane sugar, salt, at beet sugar are "natural" but HFCS, sodium chloride, and biotechnology are not.  Interestingly, salt and Sodium Chloride are the same thing!  Yet, using the technical/scientific name reduces the % perceiving salt as natural from 65.6% to 32%!

Processed foods are seen as least natural.  "Processed food" is also a vague term.  Is cheese a processed food?   

The second question I asked was the following, "Which of the following best fits your definition of 'natural food'?"  I gave four options, and here is the % of respondents choosing each option.

The majority of respondents thought that the best definition (at least among the four I included) was, "fresh foods with no added ingredients and no processing."  

I suspect many of the foods sitting on a grocery store shelf that use the word "natural" do not meet this definition consumers found most descriptive.  

The Food Demand Survey (FooDS)

For a number of years, I've thought about creating a monthly survey to track consumer knowledge, concerns, and preferences for various food-related issues.  After no small amount of effort, and thanks to the funding from the Willard Sparks Endowment and DASNR and the assistance of Susan Murray, that vision has now become a reality.  

The inaugural issue is now up online, and we will to follow with regular monthly releases.

Of course, this initial issue can't report changes , but that information will come.

For those who might be interested, the purpose of the project is to provide timely information on:

• Indices of consumer sentiments on (or beliefs about) the safety, quality, and price of food consumed at home and away from home.
• Indices of consumers' anticipated demand for various meat products consumed at home and away from home.
• Awareness of food-related issues or events that could affect demand.
• Emerging policy or marketing issues.

It is envisioned that such data could be used by analysts to:

• Construct and analyze trends in beliefs, demand, and awareness
• Forecast changes in consumption
• Compliment (i.e., merge with) existing sources of secondary data (e.g., USDA disappearance or scanner data) in food demand analysis

Some of the motivations for starting the project include the following.

• Although scanner data is available to analyze immediate past behaviors, it is inherently backward-looking.  A consumer survey can be devised to be forward looking, potentially providing better forecasts.  Moreover, analyzing demand using scanner data is tricky due to issues of supply shifts, endogeneity, unobserved quality variation, promotions, etc that can be overcome with a well-designed survey.
• Current meat demand indices are aggregate, quarterly, assume a constant demand elasticity, and attribute all price/quantity changes to shifts in demand; a survey is more rapid and can better isolate demand-side issues.
• Existing surveys of consumers (i.e., panel diaries or home scanning data) only focuses on at-home food consumption; away from home food consumption now accounts for just under half of all food expenditures.
• Although some marketing companies routinely track eating intentions and awareness of food issues, the data is proprietary and is not publically released in any uniform fashion.  Moreover, their survey questions are not always designed using state-of-the-art techniques in consumer research.