Globalisation:European Food Information Council: Studies and misinterpretations

Earlier studies by the European Food Information Council on nutrition and food-labelling were carried out to extend the research on this and the relationship with consumers. They found that more information on the subject is crucial to get the public the knowledge they need to be able to use the labels the right way. They found that more numbers and profound information confused rather then helped the consumer and therefore argued for a simple, easy to use labelling to be sanctioned by a reliable authority. One of the studies result were based on the results from focus groups and creative workshops with people from 4 different European countries to make the outcome more representative for the EU. But instead of using a wide range of people from different backgrounds, all of their participants came from the middle class spectrum of classes as the study states "All respondents were from the middle social groups BC1C2s" This raises the question on how representative the result actually is, when leaving out large parts of the EU population. When only using middle class they will only receive answer from one point of view. The result indicates that the groups in general had a decent prior knowledge on nutrition and health. But lower social classes tend to acquire their information via non-official sources such as friends, family, and word of mouth. Therefore it should lie in EUFIC’s interest to investigate a wider range of EU’s population when their main purpose is to give information to the public. To be abale to make nutrition information available to everyone it is crucial for EUFIC to explore all social classes and the ways they differ in getting information.

This is not the only study by EUFIC that could lead to misinterpretations. The study they did on food labelling, already examined in the section of lobbying, only examine the option preferred by the industry. It raises the question on to what extent EUFIC angles their research to affect the policy making towards the food and drink industry’s interests.