Getting our minds into food
16 Jan 2024
Creating a digital twin orchard in the Digital Horticultural System project demands significant technical and computational input. But sitting behind this is the need to better understand what it is that drives consumers’ perceptions and behaviour.
It is these perceptions and behaviour that initiate the initial purchase decision, and from there the structure and performance of the supply chain, right back to the orchard.
Principal scientist Dr Roger Harker and his team, including overseas scientists, have combined their knowledge of horticulture with a deep knowledge of consumer behaviour and sensory research. This is to better understand how people’s relationship with food goes beyond simply meeting a physical need to fuel one’s body.
One study he and his team conducted looked at between country differences in consumers’ attitudes to farming systems, taking biodynamic farming as one exemplar.
Surveying consumers from Singapore, Australia, UK, and Germany they used a method known as “text highlighting”. Consumers they were asked to “like” (highlight in green) and “dislike” (highlight in red) text passages describing biodynamic or “beyond organic” food systems. From this, a word cloud identifies those phrases and words that resonate most with consumers.
“What we found was “beyond organic” resonated with them, that farmers cared for soil, groundwater, wildlife, and ecosystems. They came out higher than aspects of taste, and price.”
A second study has looked at food-related wellbeing in almost 5000 consumers.
Their work found health, pleasure, food quality, positive emotions and social aspects of food consumption were all associated with food-related “wellbeing.”
In contrast, unhealthiness, disgust, and poor mental health were linked to an absence of food related wellbeing.
They found terms like “sense of wellbeing” and “feeling good” tended to give rise more often to health-related associations, while “satisfied with life” and “fulfilled in life” tended to give rise to a more spiritual association with food.
“Our food industry needs to recognise that the food we produce has multiple impacts beyond just nutrition, there are societal impacts there that need to be contemplated.”
The team have also extended this work to look more closely at how New Zealanders relate to food in a wellbeing sense.
This included exploring the wellbeing links for 16 different foods and beverages, ranking them in the order of the wellbeing they bought. The work confirmed the most important characteristics were “good quality”, “fresh” and “tasty”.
“We proved that food related wellbeing is a very complex construct, and it comes from both the foods’ different effects including physical, social, and spiritual of consuming it. These contextual and individual differences of wellbeing and food deserve a closer look,” says Roger.