Preferences for nutrition information in foodservice outlets among Greek consumers

ABSTRACT

The aim of the present survey was to identify the preferences of Greek consumers for the type of labeling and its presentation in foodservices. A tailor-made questionnaire was designed and delivered through a social media network. A number of 1015 participants successfully completed the survey from January to March 2019. Frequency tables were produced. Non-parametric analyses were used for continuous variables. Association rules were produced with the “a priori” algorithm. The mean age was 33.6 years. The 71.3% of the participants were females, 51.1% had a university degree, 51.5% were employees and 80.7% lived in urban areas. The mean frequency of EOH was 2.7 times/week. The 63.3% of the participants preferred to be informed with Traffic light Labeling and 33.8% of them with symbols. The 75.5% of the respondents had chosen menu cards to access information. Those that wanted to receive information in foodservice outlets, were consumers that used to EOH less often than those that did not want to be informed (p < .001). This is the first survey to evaluate the preferences of Greek consumers for the nutrition labeling in the foodservices. The implementation of menu labeling is a great challenge for the foodservice operators, the consumers and the nutritionists.

KEYWORDS:

• Foodservices
• menu labeling
• nutrition information
• calorie posting

Acknowledgments

Authors would like to thank Mrs. Paraskevi Anastasopoulou for the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research is co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Social Fund- ESF) through the Operational Programme «Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning» in the context of the project “Strengthening Human Resources Research Potential via Doctorate Research” [MIS-5000432], implemented by the State Scholarships Foundation (ΙΚΥ).