30% Of Americans Only Buy Healthy Foods Because They’re Trendy

It may seem like everyone is eating healthy these days, but it turns out, they may not be nutritionally motivated. According to a new survey, 30% of Americans admit they only buy healthy foods because they’re trendy.

The poll of 2-thousand U.S. adults looks at people’s food purchasing practices and finds:

• Almost two-thirds (65%) rate their grocery shopping habits as at least somewhat healthy.
• But healthiness isn’t their top priority when filling their shopping cart. Cost is number one (64%), followed by quality (36%), and personal preferences (19%), followed by healthiness in fourth (18%).
• More than eight in 10 (82%) shoppers still prefer products that use “healthwashing” terms - those on labels that promote a product’s health benefits - like “multigrain” (33%), “high-in” (31%), “sugar-free” (30%), “free-range” (30%) and “organic” (27%).
• If some of these terms are confusing to you, you’re not alone. Americans are most confident in understanding what “organic” (65%), “sugar-free,” (65%) and “multigrain” (64%) mean, but they’re unsure about what “reduced” (23%), “fortified with” (22%) and “light” (21%) really mean on a food label.
• As a result, close to a third (31%) of respondents feel overwhelmed when reading labels while food shopping.
• Misinformation adds to the confusion, like the belief that fresh produce is always healthier than canned, frozen or dried visions (38%) and that all processed foods are bad (25%).
• The top grocery items Americans would be willing to spend more on are organic produce (25%), “high in” like vitamins, iron, calcium (24%), sugar-free (21%), “reduced” like fat, sugar (20%), “free-range” (20%), and multigrain (20%).

Read the full article at Study Finds