We all know someone who is extremely vocal about their food choices, even to the point of it causing friction with others.
If not, you’ve never been on Twitter.
Sustainable, organic, vegan: terms like these are increasingly morphing into exclusive tribes and dirty words rather than simple descriptive nouns.
This is a problem, especially at a time when Canadians are reporting more societal division than ever before.
As members of the agri-food industry, it will be increasingly important for our industry to take a curious approach to market demand rather than a combative one. The first step is understanding how and why people behave the way they do in relation to their food choices.
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Luckily, there are experts who can help.
Ellen Goddard, a researcher and professor at the University of Alberta, has been researching consumer behaviour related to the agri-food system for more than three decades.
One of the most important things she’s learned is that there’s something basic at the centre of our food choices.
“The personal connection is really, really important to the choices people make about food,” she says.
In fact, Canadian consumers’ food choices are often influenced by people or institutions we trust, she says.
The good news is Canadian consumers consistently report trusting farmers above other influences “every time, without fail,” she says.
“It’s why people are comforted when they go to a farmers market; they like being able to talk to the people they believe are farming.”
Canadians also generally trust their friends, she says, as well as the government (although that trust has taken a pandemic-related dip in the last 18 months).
While consumers show a strong distrust of food retailers, they do consistently prefer food produced locally, she says.
“There’s a huge premium in people’s minds for products that are produced, processed and consumed within Canada.”
However, she’s not convinced this reflects an inherent trust in our food safety system because the same behaviour has proven to be true in every country she’s researched, including those with much lower safety standards and records.
“I’ve now come to the conclusion that it is more about ‘it must be better because I understand the system or the people within the system are more like me.’”
Another important trust measurement in consumer food choices is generalized trust, which reflects how trusting of a person you are in day-to-day life, says Jill Hobbs, a professor in the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics.
“Some people just tend to be more trusting than others,” says Hobbs, whose research also focuses on consumer behaviour in agri-food markets.
She adds that our trust in others converges with something called the availability heuristic, which means that people tend to use information that’s more easily available to them.
So, if you follow a food influencer on social media, whose posts you see frequently, that is likely to have a greater impact on you than other decision-making factors.
“That’s why social media is so important,” Hobbs says. “And I think some people are just more susceptible to stuff they might read online than others.”
Unfortunately, a lot of the information available to today’s consumers online is not scientifically sound, and often the general public doesn’t have the knowledge base to discern fact from fiction.
Goddard says that the pandemic has been a wake-up call for her on the scope of this problem, showcasing how many Canadians don’t trust science.
“I must admit, some responses to the pandemic have terrified me,” she says. “Maybe we have all underestimated the educational gaps we have in society. Maybe we’re not teaching our children properly about the scientific method.”
Furthermore, once people with strong opinions feel challenged, it’s not possible to have constructive conversations with open minds, she says.
“People hate to be patronized or be talked down to and if that ever happens, they are going to hold on to their idea more strongly and protect it because it was something they feel they discovered.”
On that note, emotions are also a major factor impacting consumer food choices.
In fact, researchers often test for something called the affect heuristic, which refers to the extent that we make decisions based on our emotions.
“We’re quite impulsive,” Hobbs says. “When you go into the store, you’re likely to buy products based on how you’re feeling rather than rational thought.”
These same emotions — and our desire for human connection — can also cause us not to choose certain foods, Goddard says.
For example, we may make decisions out of shame, embarrassment or fear of making the wrong social statement.
For example, if you’re hosting a dinner party these days you may be more inclined not to serve meat to avoid questions about if it was ethically and sustainably produced, or what type of diet the animals were fed, she says.
“People are increasingly wondering if their friends or relatives care about those things and may just avoid meat completely to avoid those questions,” she says.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to be before these concerns encourage some Canadians to stop buying turkey for Christmas dinner, for example, but it will happen at some point.”
So, we know that people’s food choices are dictated by a combination of factors, including personal beliefs, our perceptions of risk and our exposure and susceptibility to information.
And that is, of course, on top of our social demographics, such as age, income and education levels and geographic location.
But even then, consumer behaviour is not that simple, Hobbs says.
The weight of each influencing factor depends on the individual.
“We often talk about the average consumer and that’s misleading; there’s no such thing,” she says. “People are really varied.”
So, next time you hear a strong food opinion and feel yourself getting frustrated, consider instead being curious about why and how that strong opinion was formed.
Also consider the great irony highlighted above: while our food choices can be divisive, they are also often a reflection of our desire for human connection.
Food has brought people together much more often throughout history than it has divided us. And our industry has the unique privilege of being a consistent provider of that human connection.
