Perception of Food Naturalness and Meat Alternatives

This thesis examines consumers’ interest in naturalness and their perception of meat alternatives. Naturalness is a multi-faceted and complex field; what food producers market as natural is not necessarily what consumers perceive as natural. Although consumers widely prefer natural products, there are almost no regulations concerning the use of the term “natural”. Naturalness however is not equally important to all consumers. The first study of this thesis compared different scales that are used to measure the perceived importance of naturalness to consumers. It found that the most common scales are very similar and can be used interchangeably. Because there can be a large gap between perceived and objective naturalness, it was necessary to develop an integrative tool capable of measuring the degree of naturalness in food. An experiment with consumers showed that the Food Naturalness Index both represents the perception of consumers and provides a valuable tool with which food producers may compare and improve their products. To policy makers, the Food Naturalness Index serves as a starting point for regulations on the use of the naturalness claim. In addition to this benefit, establishment of the Food Naturalness Index as federally-mandated package label would allow consumers to identify natural products quickly and with little effort. Natural foods can only be produced in natural environments, and many of those environments are threatened by climate change. In general, food production and especially animal farming has a negative impact on the environment. Meat consumption contributes significantly to climate change, causes animal suffering and is linked to health risks. In order to reduce these negative effects, meat consumption must be reduced, perhaps through the substitution of meat with plant-based alternatives. As the consumption of meat alternatives is currently low, the second part of this thesis examines consumers’ acceptance of meat alternatives and attempts to acquire insights into how new meat alternatives might gain widespread popularity and eventually replace meat altogether. In the third study, we therefore collected and analyzed consumers’ associations with meat and meat alternatives, compared the appropriateness of eating meat alternatives in different situations and contrasted a diverse range of meat and meat alternative products. The findings showed that, while meat had generally positive associations, reactions to meat alternatives were rather negative. Eating meat alternatives was perceived to be more appropriate in situations where one eats alone or with family and friends rather than in a formal setting. The study also confirmed previous findings that meat alternatives should be similar to meat in regard to taste, texture, and ease of preparation. The fourth study explored consumers’ attitude towards vegetarian and vegan lifestyles and their perception of burgers containing beef, pea, and algae as protein source. An online survey was conducted with participants from Germany, France, and the United Kingdom in order to compare the influence of different culinary backgrounds. Although participants generally expressed negative attitudes towards vegetarian and vegan lifestyles, the incorporation of pea and algae was found to be promising, as those burgers were considered to be healthier and more environmentally friendly than the traditional beef burger. In summary, the present work has shown that naturalness is considered to be an important aspect for food selection. However, it is difficult to define what exactly naturalness means. This leads to diverging views between consumers and food manufacturers. It is therefore important to define the requirements for the use of the term naturalness and the newly developed Food Naturalness Index could be helpful for this. Furthermore, meat alternatives have great potential to reduce the negative impact of meat production on the environment. They have the greatest chance to successfully replace meat if they are similar in taste and consistency to meat and are offered at an attractive price. Overall, we think that as more and more people incorporate meat alternatives into their diets, the consumption of meat alternatives will become as much of a norm as eating meat is today.