Are They Careful Enough? Testing Consumers' Perception of Alternative Processing Technologies on the Quality of Organic Food

Given the increasing public interest in how ingredients are processed and the growing demand for organic food products, it is critical to understand consumers' expectations about the process-related quality of organic products. Consumers perceive organic food to be nutritious, healthy and eithe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nutrients 2021-08, Vol.13 (9), p.2922
Main Authors: Kilic, Busra, Cubero Dudinskaya, Emilia, Proi, Migena, Naspetti, Simona, Zanoli, Raffaele
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Communication
Consumer Behavior
Consumers
Design
Electric fields
Environmental impact
Experiments
Food
Food Handling - methods
Food Packaging - methods
Food processing
Food products
Food quality
Food technology
Food, Organic - standards
high-pressure
Humans
Hypotheses
Microwaves
Natural & organic foods
Nutritive Value
Packaging
Pasteurization
Perception
Public concern
pulsed-electric fields
Quality management
Sensory properties
UHT
Young Adult
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Summary:Given the increasing public interest in how ingredients are processed and the growing demand for organic food products, it is critical to understand consumers' expectations about the process-related quality of organic products. Consumers perceive organic food to be nutritious, healthy and either natural or less processed, as they are afraid of the loss of nutritional, organoleptic and sensory properties of the food products. However, alternative food processing technologies might generate healthy and safe food options with nutritional quality properties. Simplified communication schemes might help to overcome this barrier for the consumer. The main objective of this study is to propose a working definition of "careful processing" for organic products and test its consistency through an experiment, while being used to rate different processing methods by consumers. Results show that the proposed definition allows the consumer to consistently rate alternative processing technologies. Consumers tend to score alternative processing technologies such as pulsed electric fields and microwaves as less careful, supporting the idea that organic consumers want as little man-made interference in their food products as possible. Results show that a simple but effective definition of careful processing may help consumers to distinguish more organic food products from conventional ones, no matter which communication scheme is used.
ISSN:2072-6643
2072-6643
DOI:10.3390/nu13092922