The story of unfolding food to increase trust
A 1/3 of all food produced in the world goes to waste while 800 million people are still undernourished. Yet more food is needed to feed the world’s growing population while maintaining the health of our planet. How can we solve all these challenges? Only if we make a radical change in the food system, where ALL actors are involved and where the consumer is at the heart.
At EIT Food, we work to achieve a better future of food by building trust so that consumers become powerful agents of change and key players in shaping tomorrow’s food system,empowered with information they need to feel confident about science and new food technology. We do this by:
•Understanding what drives consumer trust
•Reconnecting people with how our food is made
•Providing a space for dialogue
•Creating a movement to encourage change
In this session, we take the audience through what we have learnt about the drivers of consumer trust, the implications not only for the food system but also how trust is crucial to drive change in any system. We also look at what we learnt when setting up the online FoodUnfolded® community- what do people know about food and how it is produced, what do they think about the future of food? We will share insights from experiments in food research laboratories, demonstrations at schools, escape rooms and visits in food factories events which show consumers how the food industry works.
Session speakers
EIT Food is Europe’s leading food innovation initiative, working to make the food system more sustainable, healthy and trusted. One of the ways we achieve this is through our online FoodUnfolded® community which was specifically designed to familiarise the public with food technology, building understanding through relevant topics like health, safety and sustainability, to ultimately increase trust in the European food chain through transparent dialogue. We also tackle topics from the perspectives of nutrition, sustainability, ethics and policy, to increase transparency in the food system and to help our audience make more conscious and balanced food decisions based on a better understanding of the complexity of the food system.
I will take the audience through FoodUnfolded®'s creation journey, sharing highlights and the lessons we learnt. I will also discuss the ways in which we are working to engage with citizens through entertaining and educational content by connecting citizens with food experts from both academia and industry to accurately clarify misperceptions or questions.
Aarhus University, MAPP Centre
Consumer trust is complex as it involves many different actors. Understanding the interactions between consumers and these actors and how trust is engendered in this landscape is equally complex.
I will therefore take point of departure in the work that EIT Food has done on understanding consumer trust in the TrustTracker® project. I will show results on the level of trust of European consumers in various actors in the food chain, how this trust has developed over the past years, and how it affects consumer confidence in the way food is produced and in the products coming on the market. I will discuss determinants of trust with an emphasis on what food chain actors can do in order to increase trust levels and I will show how decisive consumer trust is for the introduction of new, healthy and sustainable food products on the European market.
I will share how physical engagement events, developed in Spain, Poland and the UK, have contributed to increasing consumer confidence in the food system. During the session, I will present insights from events that have brought scientifically based evidence from experts to the consumer through activities such as escape rooms, demonstrations in schools or visits to factories, awakening a critical spirit in the consumer and reinforcing the values of trust and transparency in the food value chain.
