As the list of foods and food ingredients that are being researched grows, it is
clear that the informed consumer is reading the reports and is making changes to
her or his diet. 81% replied that they had made a conscious decision to include
specific foods that are believed to be good for health to their diet. With the easy
availability of the latest research results and publications to interpret the
significance of new findings, more and more people are taking their day to day
health strategy into their own hands. People are finding that simple changes in
their diets are not expensive, do not involve searching for strange or hard to find
ingredients and, above all, the additions are found to be tasty.
It would seem that our respondents are more inclined towards functional foods
rather than nutraceutics as only 61 % said that they regularly took a vitamin
supplement. This may be a desire to go natural and use foods themselves rather
than pills and capsules. However, for many reasons the use of supplements may
be useful. In both cases the commitment has to be long term. The protective
effects of functional foods and nutraceutics require intake of the protective agents
over a long - often years - period of time. The pie chart below reveals the above
data.