Abstract:
Food fortification is increasingly recognized as an effective public health intervention
to alleviate nutritional deficiencies. It is the practice of adding vitamins and minerals
to commonly consumed foods during processing to increase their nutritional value.
However, there are many contradictory ideas and misperceptions in the society regarding
fortified foods. Therefore, the present study was carried out to find the consumer
awareness, perceptions and preferences towards micronutrient fortified foods (MFF)
by designing a structured questionnaire which was randomly distributed among the
consumers via social media and web links. The data collected from the respondents (n =
250) were analyzed by SPSS software using chi-square statistical tool. Age, gender, marital
status, employment status, educational level, eating preferences, health condition
and monthly income level were considered as the socio-demographic characteristics of
the respondents. According to the statistical analysis, the consumer awareness strongly
correlated with age, gender and educational level (at P<0.05). The awareness of MFF,
was higher among the participants who were suffering from micronutrient deficiencies.
However, about 50% of the respondents were not aware about the food fortification.
The majority of the respondents (53.9%) didn’t know about the regulations pertaining
to MFF and they requested awareness programs on food fortification. Both consumer
preferences and perceptions towards MFF, showed positive relationship with the educational
level of the survey group (at P<0.05). The people who were in the low-income
category (<10,000 LKR) have negative perceptions on purchasing MFF. Further, the
respondents were not willing to spend extra money to purchase MFF and they preferred
mandatory food fortification over voluntary food fortification. The study revealed that
the awareness on micronutrient fortification of foods is still lacking among consumers
and it is a timely requirement to aware the general community about MFF to combat
micronutrient deficiencies in future.
