As consumers are becoming more conscious of their health and wellbeing, many are turning towards natural, ‘clean’ foods - foods with few additives, made up largely of natural ingredients.
Driven in part by the backlash against ultra-processed foods (UPFs), the trend has even made it into the plant-based meat world, with companies like This and Moving Mountains releasing ‘whole food’-focused products.
One problem, however, remains - manufacturers, retailers and policymakers don’t have a clear, well-defined understanding of what ‘clean food’ is, and what consumers want from it.
Soon, this may no longer be the case. A new ‘clean food’ classification has been designed by the University of Stirling in Scotland and Ariel University in Israel, aiming to explain the phenomenon of ‘clean food.’
How does the clean food classification work?
What is clean food consumption? The new Clean Food Consumerism (CFC) scale aims to answer this question.
Designed by retail and consumer behaviour experts from the above two universities, the CFC classifies clean food consumerism using an 18-item scale. It has five dimensions - familiarity, ease of use, healthiness, authenticity, and transparency.
The classification aims to help researchers, policymakers, manufacturers and retailers understand what consumers want from ‘clean food’, providing a reference point for the design of products and guidelines for packaging information.
Rather than being a nutritional classification in a strict sense, the scale aims to reflect the concerns of consumers.
How was the clean food classification created?
To come up with the parameters of the CFC, the researchers surveyed 1,000 consumers, in order to find out their preferences towards ‘clean food,’ and their motivations for consuming it. Combining their findings here with existing research, they came up with the main themes of the scale.
Among UK consumers, health benefits, ease of use, and production process transparency were valued highly, whereas a high price was valued negatively.
“Consumers want their food to be made from natural ingredients, be additive-free, authentic, and non-genetically modified. These are the drivers of the clean food consumerism movement, and our CFC scale reflects those motivations and concerns,” says Professor Leigh Sparks, one of the researchers.
“Our findings have implications for manufacturers of clean food, namely that they should focus not only on offering food that is healthier, familiar, and of high quality to consumers, but that they should emphasise the transparency of the production processes. Our hope is that the scale can form the basis for more detailed packaging and guidelines as this movement, and the market for related products, continues to grow.”
The researchers also suggest that alongside such a classification, regulations should be introduced to build consumer knowledge and confidence.