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Healthier meat products have a major economic potential and are attracting considerable research and media attention to meet the growing and complex consumer demand. Whether this potential will be realized and at what speed is contingent on consumers’ acceptance of these novel foods. This study uses a cross-cultural context to co-create new healthier meat products, while mapping the conditions leading to consumers’ product acceptance (vs. rejection). Results from online focus groups conducted in Denmark, Spain and the United Kingdom show that consumers generally have a negative attitude toward healthier meat products due to unfamiliarity and perception of over-processing. Nevertheless, partial meat-substitution with plant-based ingredients together with fat and salt reduction show specific conditions under which consumers’ acceptance would be possible. This is further related to product-specific factors: ingredients and base meat, and marketing-related factors: labelling and packaging. Finally, implications and recommendations for the manufacturing and marketing of new healthier meat products are provided., This study has received funding from EIT Food (https://www.eitfood.eu/) through the project “Consumer attitudes towards healthier processed meat products” (grant number: 20206, EIT Food Business Plan 2020).

The COVID-19 pandemic and especially the lockdowns coming with it have been a disruptive event also for food consumption. In order to study the impact of the pandemic on eating habits, self-reported changes in food-related behaviours were investigated in ten European countries by means of an online survey. A latent class cluster analysis distinguished five clusters and showed that different types of consumers can be distinguished based on how they react to the pandemic as regards their eating habits. While food-related behaviours were resilient for 60% of the sample, another 35% reported more enjoyment in cooking and eating, more time in the kitchen and more family meals. Among those, a slight majority also showed signs of more mindful eating, as indicated by more deliberate choices and increased consumption of healthy food, whereas a slight minority reported more consumption of indulgence food. Only 5% indicated less involvement with food. As the COVID-19 pandemic is a disruptive event, some of these changes may have habit-breaking properties and open up new opportunities and challenges for food policy and food industry., This project has received funding from EIT Food, the European Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) on Food, under KAVA 20423

The nutritional characteristics of chocolate products may be associated with very different, and even opposite, health effects. In the present study, we collected information on chocolate products on the Polish market to assess: (i) nutritional characteristics; (ii) ingredient order; (iii) the presence of nutritional claims on the label; (iv) packaging characteristics; and (v) any association between price and cocoa contents. A total of 220 bars of solid chocolate (90 % with at least 5 ingredients) and 147 chocolate bar sweets (90 % with at least 6 ingredients) were evaluated. Mean values for calorie, total lipid, saturated fatty acid, carbohydrate, protein, sugar and salt contents were significantly different between the bars of solid chocolate and chocolate bar sweets, although the values were widely dispersed in both categories. Some aspects of food labelling may result in confusion for the consumer (such as “vegan” claims). A weak (r = 0.459), although significant (p < 0.05), association was found between cocoa content and price (€/kg) in bars of solid chocolate, although no association was found in chocolate bar sweets. Thus, depending on chocolate product selection, nutritional benefits may be rather different: an aspect not evident to most consumers based on current chocolate bar labelling., This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/Spanish Research Agency (RTI2018-095059-B-I00), co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund. E. H. Y. was granted a Talent Fellowship from the EIT Food RIS Fellowships project, 2020.