Have you ever wondered how nutrition trends get started? Why did "fat-free" become all the rage in the 1990s, while "low-carb" is currently the "in" thing? Consumers complain that health advisors "keep changing their minds." On the other hand, based on what they hear and read, consumers also change their priorities when it comes to the nutrition topics they are following. Are trends really that hard to understand?
Trend Starters
Felicia Busch, a Minneapolis-based nutrition communications consultant and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, believes that "there are really two different kinds of trends: the first kind develops from a slow groundswell of interest. It can come from a new book or a study that presents a new hypothesis. Scientific research often contributes to emerging nutrition trends. These kinds of trends are usually promoted by the media and continue until the public is saturated. The second kind of trend occurs when a major milestone happens. When there's a food recall or people die from food-borne disease, people stop and reflect. A milestone can either jump-start a trend or support other trends that are already out there." Trends that arise from groundswells are more common than those that arise from milestone events.
Trend Influencers
Consumers' desires and needs depend on their beliefs and attitudes. Here are just a few of the many factors that affect how people feel about nutrition and health:
- beliefs about what keeps us healthy and how we get sick;
- attitudes about our ability to control our lives and therefore our health and eating habits; and
- reactions to hearing or reading news stories, reading books, and talking with friends and family members about the latest nutrition "thing."
Consumer surveys have repeatedly shown that the public depends on the media for most of their information about health and nutrition. Of course, people ask their health care providers for information as well. According to the survey
Shopping for Health 2001 (
Prevention Magazine and the Food Marketing Institute), most people rely primarily on magazines (75 percent) and books (72 percent) and then turn to health care professionals (63 percent), friends or family (58 percent), newspapers (51 percent), and television (49 percent) for information about health and nutrition. Twenty five percent turn to nutritionists or dietitians.
Linda Gilbert, president of HealthFocus International in Atlanta, Georgia, is a market researcher who specializes in consumer health and nutrition trends. Gilbert believes that the media have a powerful influence on trends but that there is another critical factor: repetition. "Hearing the same things from a number of sources is key.... It's not just the media that effect trends. Sources like friends and families, nurse practitioners, and even coffee shop hearsay remind consumers that 'I've heard that before.' When it comes to beliefs about nutrition and health, repetition is so important. It's almost like water torture because you have to be exposed to it for a while before the message sinks in."
Felicia Busch agrees that the media influence what people hear and read about nutrition and health. "People get their information from the media. And, the media often depend on a few top sources, and reporters tend to 'feed' off each other. A newspaper article can lead to a TV story or magazine article and vice versa."
Trend Case Study: Consumer Interest in Fat
Between 1985 and 1995, the top nutrition concern for consumers was fat consumption (see Figure 1). This isn't surprising, since many scientific studies conducted in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s examined the relationship between diet and health and very likely induced the initial groundswell of interest in dietary fat. In 1980, the first edition of
Dietary Guidelines for Americans published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Nutrition Policy and Promotion encouraged people to "avoid too much fat, saturated fat and cholesterol." In the late 1980s, the
Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, as well as
Diet and Health by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on nutrition's effect on health and disease. As a result, fat's role in heart disease and weight control became a primary focus.
Popular books also reflected consumers' growing concern about fat in their diets. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, several popular books that advocated extremely low-fat diets became best sellers.
Food product development also reflected consumers' interest in fat: many non-fat, low-fat, or reduced-fat products were introduced in the marketplace between 1990 and 1998.
As early as 1995, however, the low-fat trend was winding down. Consumers realized that a low-fat diet wasn't a cure-all for control of their cholesterol levels or for weight control and wasn't meeting their taste needs either. Consumers began looking for something new. In 1996,
The Zone by Barry Sears reached #5 on the
Publishers Weekly annual bestseller list, and
Sugar Busters by H. Leighton Steward et al. reached #3 and #8 on the
Publishers Weekly annual bestseller lists in 1998 and 1999, respectively. Both
The Zone and
Sugar Busters focused on the alleged negative effects of sugar and carbohydrates in the diet. In addition, out of the background, an old idea came roaring back to life: the low-carbohydrate diet. Robert Atkins first became a best-selling author in the early 1970s with
Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution. In 1999,
Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution was published, and as of the time of writing of this article it had remained on the
Publishers Weekly bestseller list for the previous 218 weeks.
The media also became less interested in fat: the proportion of articles or reports on the topics of diet, nutrition, and food safety in the media fell from a high of 18 percent in 1995 to 4 percent in 2001, according to a media analysis, Food For Thought, commissioned by the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation. The analysis examined 40 of the leading newspapers, magazines, national and local television news programs, and online media.
Clearly, the low-fat trend has been over for some time. But what of consumer interest about nutrition in general?
The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) in Washington, DC, has studied consumer attitudes about nutrition and health for the last 20 years. FMI's consumer survey data indicate that the percentage of consumers reporting that they are "very concerned about the nutritional content of what they eat" was relatively stable from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s (see Figure 1). Since then, this percentage has declined a bit.
Some trend watchers think the decline in consumer concern about nutrition is partly due to the public's perception that advisors keep changing their minds. Nutrition communications consultant Busch explains, "When you think about fat during the period from 1980 until 1995, we had to keep modifying our positions about fats as we learned more about the relationship between dietary fat and health. First we had people follow no-cholesterol diets, then it was low-fat diets, then it became low-saturated fats, now we're talking about low-trans-fat diets. I'm not sure how much of an impact this [modification of recommendations] has had on people just giving up." In defense of nutrition professionals, Busch adds, "There was so much information coming out at once: no wonder the public was confused. It's hard to have people understand that science is an ongoing process."
Where Do We Go from Here?
Trends in nutrition come and eventually go. Either a trend becomes a cultural norm because everyone is doing it or the trend dies because other needs and interests eclipse it. According to data from a HealthFocus International survey, consumers are very interested in the health benefits that certain foods may provide. For example, 76 percent of shoppers surveyed said they want to learn more about "cancer-preventing chemicals in fruits, vegetables and grains," whereas 73 percent are interested in folic acid and heart disease.
The media's interest in nutrition has also shifted more toward the subject of functional foods and the specific benefits of compounds such as lutein, flavonoids, and isoflavones. The IFIC Foundation's recent media analysis reported that news stories about vitamin and mineral intakes (5 percent), antioxidants (3 percent), and functional foods (4 percent) accounted for 12 percent of all media discussions about diet, nutrition, and food safety. The other topics reported on most often from May through July 2001were biotechnology (12 percent), disease prevention (9 percent), and food-borne illness (8 percent). Also, news stories about fat have shifted from a focus on low-fat foods to how certain types of fat such as omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acids can have health benefits.
Certainly, nutrition is still a hot topic among consumers, even though they may be less concerned now than they were in the previous decade. Nutrition trends, like all trends, change with time, depending on consumer needs and interests, scientific reports, media coverage of issues, and sometimes, major milestone events. For most of us, tracking trends is easier than predicting them, and studying them can be a fascinating way to look at our society and culture.
Stay tuned....
Definitions According to Webster's Dictionary
Trend: a prevailing tendency or general direction; the general movement in the course of time of a statistically detectable change.
Fad: a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal: craze
One Theory About How Nutrition Topics Get Hot
- Consumers have a need for information, a product, or a service ("the topic"). This need may be conscious or unconscious.
- A book or a major news story about the topic captures the public's and the media's
interest because it meets a need.
- People read a book, hear and watch news stories, and talk with friends and family about the topic.
- The public's and the media's interest in the topic fuels more news stories.
- Food companies note ongoing consumer interest and modify or create food products (if possible) that mirror consumer interest in the topic, thereby attempting to meet their need.
- Consumers try new foods. This may or may not confirm their belief in the nutrition topic and may or may not lead to changes in their eating patterns if the product(s) meets consumers' needs, that is, is readily available, tastes good, and can be purchased at a reasonable cost.
- The topic remains "hot" as long as there are ongoing mentions of the topic in the media and other thought stimulators to confirm the trend. The trend will last until someone or some other hot topic eclipses interest in the original topic or consumers decide that the information, product, or service does not meet their needs.
Trend Tracking Sources
