We eat alternately healthy and unhealthy in 2018. We behave less healthy, but at the same time eat more vegetables, fruit and fish. The Dutch are searching, often doubting buyers who eagerly try products only to abandon them again, concludes Motivaction in research on eating habits.
First, one side of consumer behaviour. Knowing more about nutrition and health makes the customer uncertain. What he does know for sure: the truth about nutrition does not exist. Therefore, the idea that there is a trend towards growing health awareness with associated dietary habits and diets is not correct.
The phenomenon occasionally emerges a little more, but then disappears again.
Consumers do show consistency in their health awareness and behaviour during food trends such as Weight Watchers, Montignac, Een leven lang fit, Sonja Bakker, low carb from Atkins, gluten-free and superfoods.
Healthy behaviour reduces
We are behaving less and less healthy. In 1991, 58 per cent of the Dutch population endorsed the statement I live as healthy as possible. Last year, the figure was 53 per cent. In 26 years of consistent polling, this figure never exceeded 63 per cent and never fell below 52 per cent, according to Trendbox/Motivaction 1991-2017.
Data from the past seven years show that health awareness is declining rather than increasing across the board. We also see this in CBS figures. Over the past 25 years, obesity rose sharply. In 1990, one in three adult Dutch people (33 per cent) said they had too many pounds, by 2015 this had risen to almost half of all adults (49 per cent), the Health Survey/Lifestyle Monitor, CBS i.s.m. RIVM 2015 shows. This is not only due to unhealthy eating habits or excessive calorie intake, but also to too little exercise.
More vegetables, fruit and fish
At the same time, the trend towards healthy eating also emerges again when we look at the past year. One in three Dutch people say they started eating more vegetables and more fruit in the past 12 months than before. Fish and nuts also appeared more on the table. Likewise, one in three Dutch people said they started consuming less salt and less sugar in the past 12 months. The same goes for hard fats, (red) meat and potatoes.
Among drinks, tea and especially water became more popular, with four in 10 Dutch people believing they started drinking more water in the past 12 months. On the contrary, drinking carbonated soft drinks - read: sugary soft drinks - would be under pressure, according to respondents.
Half eat healthy and consciously, a third eat on the fly
Half of the Dutch eat healthy and aware or as healthy and aware as possible. These include consumers aged 55-plus, higher educated and responsible buyers - socially critical, focus on organic and sustainable - as defined in Motivaction's Shopper model.
On the other hand, a third of shoppers literally eat off: I eat what I like whether it is healthy or not. These are mainly young people under 35, convenience buyers - impulsive, passive, opting for quick and easy - and brand-conscious buyers - status-conscious, focused on convenience, preferring A-brands.
A third without meat and fish
Some 6 per cent of the Dutch call themselves vegetarians, 31 per cent are flexitarians: they consciously do not eat meat or fish on one or more days of the week. Among the Eigenwijze buyers - pioneers in food trends, impulsive, try new products - and Curious shoppers - innovative, critical, focus on quality and organic - from the Shopper model, this is already more than half.
Both these groups of consumers will continue to grow. This is proven by the interest in vegetarian dishes, which has doubled in the past 25 years from 9 per cent in 1991-1992 to 18 per cent in 2016, according to Trendbox Life & Living.
Almost one in seven Dutch people follow a diet whether or not on medical prescription. Among convenience shoppers, it is only 5 per cent. The low-carb diet currently has the most followers.
Knowing more makes insecure
So the Dutch are eating both healthy and unhealthy healthy. This also has to do with a contradiction: the more research is published on nutrition and health, the more flawed and especially contradictory knowledge of it seems to become. Uncertainty about what is and is not healthy is now even causing consumers cooking stress, Motivaction notes in the survey.
Publications from independent bodies like the Health Council and the Nutrition Centre do help him on his way, but do not solve his wavering. For instance, six months after publication, the latest Healthy Eating Guidelines were somewhat familiar to less than one in five Dutch people and no more than 13 per cent expected to be likely to change dietary behaviour based on the new Disk of Five, Motivaction found in 2016.
Moreover, we in the Netherlands are not very fond of dietary recommendations: 34 per cent find them patronising, 46 per cent do not understand why new recommendations are issued every time and 51 per cent even get 'a bit crazy' about all those guidelines, Trendbox saw in 2016.
