Article

A survey on domestic consumer’s awareness of food additives and Clean Label concept

Min Kyung Park, Heeyoung Lee, Bum-Keun Kim, Min-Cheol Kang, Tae-Kyung Kim, Jung-Min Sung, Eun Young Jeon, Yun-Sang Choi*
Author Information & Copyright
1Korea Food Research Institute, Wanju 55365, Korea.
*Corresponding Author: Yun-Sang Choi, Phone: +82632199387. E-mail: kcys0517@kfri.re.kr.

© Copyright 2023 Korean Society for Food Science of Animal Resources. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Sep 21, 2023; Revised: Sep 27, 2023; Accepted: Oct 04, 2023

Published Online: Oct 04, 2023

Abstract

This survey investigated the perceptions of domestic consumers regarding food additives and ‘Clean Label’ concept. Clean Label aims to provide consumers with information that the food products exclude the addition of artificial ingredients and instead use natural processing method. However, so far, there is no common and clear definition of Clean Label for domestic consumers. In the results, when purchasing food products, consumers expressed concerns about food additives at a high rate among all respondents (63.7%), and the reason were linked to human health. In addition, the survey results on the domestic consumer’s awareness of Clean Label indicated that 74.4% of all respondents had only heard of the term or encountered it for the first time, and 33.6% have never obtained related information or knowledge. Thus, it is still considered that Clean Label is an unfamiliar term with an unclear definition. In this study, domestic consumers perceived the Clean Label to include organic, natural and free from artificial ingredients. Also, they believed that the introduction of Clean Label in the domestic food market is necessary and were willing to pay additional costs for it. In conclusion, to apply the Clean Label concept to food products excluding artificial additives and ingredients, it is important to establish and disseminate a unified definition between consumers and manufacturers.

Keywords: Clean Label; Food additives; Food labeling; Domestic customer; Food purchase