Nutrition Policy and Individual Struggle to Eat Healthily: The Question of Public Support

Abstract

The evidence for the effectiveness of nutrition policy interventions is growing. For the implementation of such interventions, social acceptability is crucial. Therefore, this study provides insight into public support for nutrition policy measures such as labelling and taxation. Further it analyses the level of acceptance in a quantitative segmentation approach. A new element to our approach is the comparison of different policy instruments, focusing on the interaction between policy acceptance and the perceived individual struggle to eat healthily. The survey was conducted in November 2017 and a total of 1035 German consumers are included in the data. The results indicate that the majority of German citizens accept nutrition policy interventions. Based on a cluster analysis, five different target groups according to the general acceptance of policy interventions and their own struggle to eat healthily are derived. The five-cluster solution reveals that both consumers who tend to eat a healthy diet as well as those who have problems with their diet support nutritional interventions. This shows that the perceived own struggle to eat healthily does not predict whether consumers accept nutrition policy interventions.

Keywords: acceptability; government; health status; intervention ladder; nutrition policy instruments.

Figure 1

Cluster matrix (mean values). Notes: Numbers are the index values for each cluster, the mean values are added up of each variable and divided by the number of interventions (see Table 4); scale from: −2 = “I do not agree at all” to +2 = “I totally agree”; from left to right: 12% = health-conscious rejecters (4), 12% = health-unconscious rejecter (2), 26% = differentiating supporters (3), 33% = health-conscious advocates (5); 17% = help-seeking advocates (1).