In 2030, thanks to an attractive offering of healthy and flavourful products, Swedish consumers have better eating habits.
We have never lived longer, and, from an international perspective, we have good public health. Despite this, many people suffer from chronic diseases linked to lifestyle, where food and eating habits play a major role. The problems involve aspects like overweight and obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Access to healthy foods and meals can help prevent many of the diet-related conditions and even contribute to improved perceived health in people who are well.
In 2030, thanks to an attractive offering of healthy and flavourful products, Swedish consumers have better eating habits.
We have never lived longer, and, from an international perspective, we have good public health. Despite this, many people suffer from chronic diseases linked to lifestyle, where food and eating habits play a major role. The problems involve aspects like overweight and obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Access to healthy foods and meals can help prevent many of the diet-related conditions and even contribute to improved perceived health in people who are well.
KNOWLEDGE OF CONSUMER CHOICES
The importance of lifestyle and meal situation when it comes to what and how we choose to eat makes it necessary to gain access to deep understanding of consumer behaviour and expectations regarding healthy food. We must advance our understanding of how consumers think in terms of food, health, and sustainability in a changing society, and strengthen the food supply chain’s knowledge of consumer behaviour and the link between food and health. Doing so requires new tools for data collection and consumer behaviour analysis.
FACILITATE CONSUMER CHOICES
In a free market, the final decision lies with the consumer. Therefore, we should make it easier for the consumer to make informed and healthy choices in harmony with the Swedish dietary guidelines. This involves developing tools that make it easier for the individual consumer to choose right. The various obstacles standing in the way of targeting dietary advice adapted to different audiences must be identified and addressed.
How packaging design, colours, choice of images and other aspects of communication can support the consumer’s choice of healthier foods needs to be investigated.
Consumers, health care professionals, and others must be able to assess the health effects of foods and meals as well. This requires developing digital tools and communication channels.
HEALTH BENEFITS
Offering a wide selection of foods that help the consumer to good eating habits is an important responsibility for the food industry. A key aspect here is access to new food products with health benefits. To achieve this, it is important to develop models, methods, and technologies, as well as databases for identifying, measuring, and understanding health effects – at both individual and group level – from individual raw ingredients, foods, and entire dietary patterns. This applies to already developed products as well as new ones.
For producers, it is important that new processes and technologies are developed for best possible nutritional content and taste. Products adapted to various audiences must be developed and we also need better understanding of how modified lifestyles affect the health effects of food.
POSITIVE TASTE SENSATIONS
In order for healthy foods to have the desired effects, they must provide a positive taste sensation and improved perceived well-being. Developing foods with good sensory properties is very important to increase acceptance and availability when the food product is introduced to the market. This means that we need to develop methods that predict and measure taste sensations based on a multi-sensory perspective. We also need methods that enable predicting the sensory quality based on the product’s properties and the meal situation.
CASE
Redusalt
Sweden is one of the countries in the western world where daily intake of salt is too high. On average, we consume between 10 and 20 grams of salt per day compared to the recommended intake of 6 grams. A high intake is associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure and thus an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and kidney damage.
The fact that we eat too much salt is partly linked to a food culture where salt is traditionally used to preserve foods like fish, meats, and dairy products. In cooking, salt is often used to enhance other flavours. A large part of our intake comes from processed meats, bread, cooking fat, cheese, and ready-made foods.
In other countries, like the United Kingdom and Finland, government agencies and food companies have successfully worked together to reduce salt intake. In Sweden, through the Redusalt Project, with 18 partners from the food industry, government agencies, and consumer organisations, and under the management of RISE, we have worked for three years to develop methods that enable reducing the salt content of products and meal solutions while retaining flavour and maintaining safety.
The project shows that it is possible to reduce the salt content in the type products studied without negative consequences. This is an important contribution to reducing the intake of salt to 6 grams per day. Such a reduction would in turn lead to significantly improved public health, with reduced costs for health care by SEK 3 billion per year and a reduced number of deaths due to the effects of excessive salt intake by 2,000 people per year.
