Grocery shoppers in Bangkok rank the freshness of food as the most important factor in their grocery buying decisions according to new research released today by the Asian Food Information Centre (AFIC). Value for money was also important to shoppers.

AFIC, based in Bangkok, is a not-for-profit organization that works to help close the gap between the science and popular consumer understanding on a variety of food and health topics. The research was presented at a global summit meeting of food information organizations on “Progressing Food and Health Issues Management: East and West” held in Bangkok on December 3-6.

Helen Yu, executive director of AFIC, said “It’s important to ensure that health messages are readily understandable and actionable by consumers.
This means that consumer research is critical in developing healthy lifestyle messages. Food labelling is an issue that has been widely debated in Thailand recently and this research aimed to shed some light on just what sort of information consumers want on food labels”.

The AFIC study was conducted in Bangkok on 400 grocery buyers to determine what information shoppers wanted on food labels and how often they used the information currently available. Most shoppers (60 percent) said they looked at the freshness of a food while nearly half said that “value for money” (the food was affordable and filling) was important in food choice.
Taste also ranked highly with 44 per cent of shoppers saying it influenced their food choice.

Three out of five people tested said they looked for nutrition information on a food label at least occasionally. The information most searched for was the presence of food additives in a product. Other commonly searched for information included sugar and protein content, total fat levels, the presence of vitamins and the amount of calories/energy in that order.

When respondents were asked about their thoughts on food labels, 75 per cent said they were satisfied with the current information found on food labels.

The study also looked at the incidence of eating out. Not surprisingly, most people in Bangkok ate out frequently, with more than 50% taking at least one meal a day out of the home, most commonly from street hawkers.

“Food labels are just one source of information for consumers,” said Yu.
“This study showed that people were interested in healthy eating and looked for information from a variety of sources”