Consumer Beliefs About Food Supply And The Environment
Brands in the food, beverage, and supplements market cannot ignore the looming threats of climate change and global food shortages. World hunger is a particularly urgent crisis: 828 million people were impacted by hunger in 2021, while over three billion people could not afford a healthy diet. Without effective interventions, the authors of this report worry that efforts to prevent global hunger and environmental protection will fail.
This report, written for the food, beverage, and supplements industry, explores some of the current environmental problems associated with the global food supply chain and how consumers feel about them. The authors want to encourage brands to find innovative ways of addressing these problems. The data were collected from a series of global market research surveys on nutrition, meat and plant-based foods, and sustainability. However, people from the Global South (especially Sub-Saharan Africa) were underrepresented in the sample.
Results show that consumers are increasingly concerned about how food supply chains cause environmental harm. 43% of global consumers were also concerned about the risk of future food shortages in 2022 compared to 36% in 2020.
Consumers often recognize how food waste directly contributes to climate change. However, while around 80% of people believe it’s important to avoid food waste, only 66% tried to lower their food waste between 2020-2022. Consumers primarily blamed their food waste on products with a short shelf life, and many would be willing to try products with an extended shelf life — however, they are also concerned about the added preservatives that make extended shelf lives possible. As such, the authors recommend that brands find other ways of extending the shelf life of their products, such as being more flexible with “use-by” dates and trying new packaging.
Consumers also see value in plant-based and other alternative proteins. This trend reflects the growth of vegan, vegetarian, and flexitarian diets in the last decade. These consumers are largely motivated by concerns over health, sustainability, and animal ethics. Nut-based protein was the most popular, appealing to 60% of respondents, while insect protein was the least appealing. The authors recommend that brands frame plant-based proteins as essential to solving the global food crisis and combat stereotypes of plant-based eating as “elitist.”
For consumers concerned about fully removing animal products from their diet, 59% of respondents found the idea of “hybrid” products (with plant and animal proteins) either appealing or very appealing. 44% of those who were interested in these products explained that they struggle to give up animal products completely, so hybrid items would be a good compromise. Such proteins would not satisfy the needs of veg*n consumers but could potentially reach a bigger audience.
The report also discusses cultivated meat as a way to address food shortages. However, the authors note that cultivation may exacerbate consumer concerns over the “naturalness” of their proteins. Only 20% of respondents were willing to try lab-grown fish products, while 21% were willing to try lab-grown meat and 23% lab-grown milk.
Overall, the authors argue that consumers want food, drink, and supplement companies to do more to mitigate environmental harms and food supply threats. Rising awareness of how food industrialization has hastened species extinction and zoonotic disease threats has led consumers to call for sustainable supply chains. As such, the report points out that companies ought to prioritize corporate social responsibility as a key part of their business.
While consumers are willing to partake in changes to benefit global hunger and the environment, it is also important to carefully market these supply chain innovations to address consumer hesitancies. For example, when launching environmentally-friendly products, brands should emphasize things that are important to their audience like taste, nutrition, cost-effectiveness, and naturalness. Doing so can help address the attitude/behavior gap in which consumers want to consume sustainably, but often fail to do so.