17-19 May 2006, Florence (I)
Background and purpose
Although health claims are of interest and relevance to consumers, the level of consumer understanding of claims is only partial. Consumer understanding of health claims is much less coherent, consistent and ‘organised’ than any scientific assessment of the substantiating evidence to support the claim. Furthermore, there is a surprising lack of systematic research into what health benefits appeal to consumers and their level of understanding.
The need to measure the level of consumer understanding of health claims and to identify what consumers get out of health claims will increase substantially when the European regulations on nutrition and health claims are adopted. These new laws require food companies to provide evidence that the health claims they use on foods and food components are understandable and not misleading to the average consumer.
The purpose of the workshop is to stimulate the debate on how nutrition and health claims can exert effects on consumer behaviour and, in particular, to consider methodologies that can be developed to assess how consumers are able to verbalise what the health claim is and what the food or food component does. The meeting will consist of both presentations and working group activities. The working groups will discuss topics in relation to consumer understanding of health claims.
Publication
It is the intention to review an expert group paper at the workshop and to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal. In addition, the workshop summary report will be published in the ILSI Europe Report Series.