The workshop was carried out as part of an Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food project on consumer engagements with food governance. The Oxford Food Governance Group project aims to elucidate the emerging forms, roles, and uses of food-related information and communication technologies (ICT) at the consumer level, and how they might shape the EU food governance landscape in years to come.

This study presents different ways of presenting information on food calories and assesses how useful consumers find them. It showed participants of 3 groups the calorie content of a ham sandwich, displaying this information in different formats as shown in the diagram below.

The UK’s Daily Mail reports that the UK supermarket Tesco will monitor the healthiness of its customers’ food purchases using Clubcard data and then use that data to suggest ways in which people could make healthier choices. Although plans are still in the early stages options considered so far include offering vouchers for healthier products and promoting a better diet via suggested recipes. 

This is an interesting study which tests preferences for sugar, fat, salt and umami (savoury-ness) among children in a range of European countries. It finds that children’s liking for these tastes varies by country, suggesting that culture has a very strong part to play in influencing food preferences. While hardly a major revelation in itself, what I take from this study is that the very common assumptions we see about the ‘inevitability’ of growth in demand for high fat and high sugar foods, or for meat products, are open to challenge.

A report by the UK consumer group Which? calls for a new approach to how food issues are handled to give consumer interests much greater priority, based on: Strong Government leadership and a clear food strategy; Effective consumer engagement on food issues;