Consumer Awareness, Perceptions and Preferences Towards Micronutrient Fortified Foods

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.