Food Literacy How Do Communications and Marketing Impact Consumer Knowledge, Skills, and Behavior? Workshop Summary (2016) / Chapter Skim
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1 Session 1: Food Literacy and the Role of Communications Relating to Food Safety, Nutrition, and Other Health Matters
1 Session 1: Food Literacy and the Role of Communications Relating to Food Safety, Nutrition, and Other Health Matters
Pages 3-22
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From page 3... ...
. When it's done right, food is well-being." -- Sonya Grier The goal of the first session of the workshop, moderated by Sarah Roller of Kelley Drye, planning committee chair and member of the the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Food Forum, was to describe the current state of the science concerning the role of consumer education, health communications and marketing, commercial brand marketing, health literacy, and other forms of communication in affecting consumer knowledge and behavior with respect to food safety, nutrition, and other health matters.
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These steps are supported by communication and health literacy research, Bauer noted. FOOD LITERACY AS A PATH TO FOOD WELL-BEING1 In discussing food literacy in the broader context of food well-being, Grier spoke about (1)
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Her statement that "No one sits down to eat a plate of nutrients" guided the remainder of the conference, Grier recalled, and led to the emergence of the concept of food well-being: that food provides not only physical but also emotional and psychological nourishment. Grier noted the many rituals associated with food and how eating is "something you do with your family." Shifting the paradigm from the notion that food equals health to this notion that food equals well-being appears to be a small shift, but it is one with many implications, Grier explained.
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The Food Well-Being Model Grier explained that the food well-being model has five core dimensions: (1) food socialization, (2)
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Grier stressed the importance of considering the interplay between how children are socialized within families and how these broader societal structures provide information and influence behavior. Food Marketing Grier described food marketing as the strategic use of product, price, and promotion (i.e., the "marketing mix" minus place)
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Food Policy The fourth core dimension of food well-being includes policies related to agriculture or food production, food pricing, food safety, and food labeling, all of which have a major impact on whether consumers can achieve food well-being, Grier stated. At the individual level, she explained, policies can impact food well-being by allowing consumers to make informed decisions and give them peace of mind in their choices.
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She emphasized the importance of motivation, ability, and opportunity to apply that knowledge when making food choices. Considering this broader context, she defined food literacy as "understanding nutrition information and acting on it in a way that is consistent with nutrition goals and with food well-being." At the individual level, food literacy has three main components, Grier explained.
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health centers in medically underserved communities, Grier and colleagues (2007) looked at how marketing strategies, product, price, promotion, and access influence parental attitudes and social norms around fast food consumption and how those attitudes and norms, in turn, influence the amount of fast food parents feed their children.
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The Complexity of Health Literacy Baur posed the question, "What is so confusing or hard to understand about food and nutrition? " She cited several concepts that experts consider when trying to develop messages about food and nutrition, including nutrition quality, dietary intake, food preparation, and healthy eating.
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Experts in such fields as medicine, public health, and dentistry are equally concerned, she observed, and communicators often are dealing with a large gap between what these experts and lay people understand, expect, and want to happen. Adult Literacy, Numeracy, and Health Literacy Baselines At an even more basic level, few adults have no literacy skills at all, Baur explained, and most fall somewhere on a spectrum of skills, ranging from very low to somewhat high.
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An example of an everyday health literacy task is figuring out the cost of a health insurance premium from a form; individuals who could do this successfully were scored as proficient. Bauer remarked that having basic or below basic health literacy skills affects a person's ability to find, understand, and use health information.
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. In this model, cognition, beliefs, messages, skills, and other individual factors that influence health literacy are part of a larger overall picture that also includes marketing practices, food availability, social norms, and other aggregatelevel attributes.
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Questions to Consider Based on her work in health literacy, Baur posed a list of questions for workshop participants to consider with regard to food literacy. First, she asked, what do experts think people should know about food, and do experts from different disciplines agree?
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Each of these steps depends on a mix of knowledge and skills that people must use in the appropriate sequence to ensure food safety. From a health literacy perspective, said Baur, several research and practice questions about food literacy relate to individual, organizational, and social/environmental levels of analysis.
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Baur also offered a "final recommendation and caution": that health literacy insights should be used to highlight audiences' or end users' perspectives, experiences, and needs rather than to justify another traditional education campaign. The goal, she said, should be to illuminate practical solutions that help audiences understand and use information, not solutions that serve organizational needs.
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People are motivated to respond to food safety messages because they do not want to get sick, she noted, whereas messages about eating for health promotion are more challenging. Baur agreed that food safety messages tend not only to be simpler but also to resonate with consumers.
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"Even when I do my absolute best to design something in the clearest way possible using these science-based criteria," Baur said, "I am not getting 100 percent comprehension in the way that I intend as the sender." With respect to the role of education, she stated that there is a strong correlation between education and health knowledge, but it is not one for one. She suggested being mindful that relying on print to deliver health information challenges people who lack strong literacy skills -- a significant portion of the U.S.
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Grier suggested as an important topic for further research identifying interventions that balance individual behavior with societal health. The Role of Qualitative Research in Gaining a Better Understanding of Food Well-Being Linda Neuhauser, workshop presenter, asked the speakers about messages that resonate with parents, particularly messages about food wellbeing.
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Grier suggested further that the same approach might be a helpful way to begin to answer the question raised by Harrison about food well-being in the broader context of social well-being. Considering the Complexity of People's Lives Wendy Johnson-Askew, workshop moderator, told of being a dietician many years ago and having a patient say to her, "The only label I read is ‘two for a dollar.'" Given the reality of people's complex lives, she asked how messages that resonate can be developed and how the context of people's lives can be measured and captured.
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