Truth about ‘food movement’ may surprise you

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The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.

. . . Ask people whether they care about a particular topic, and they’re likely to tell you — truthfully — that they do. But ask what people care about without prompting, and the fraction of people citing the issues that fall under food movement auspices – organics, local food, genetically modified organisms, farm subsidies, antibiotics, farmworker conditions, animal welfare — is actually quite small.

Take GMO labeling: Polls routinely show that, when you ask people whether they want GMOs labeled, upwards of 90 percent say yes. Overwhelming support for labeling GMOs! But if, instead, you ask consumers what they’d like to see identified on food labels that isn’t already there, a paltry 7 percent say “GMOs.” Almost no support for labeling GMOs!

That 7 percent study was done by William Hallman, professor and chairman of the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. . .

The moral of this story is that it’s easy to make it look like people care a whole lot more than they do.

Where does that leave us? How many people really do care? Is there even such a thing as a food movement?

. . .

What explains the discrepancy between the common perception of a growing “food movement” and the disconcerting data on what people actually buy and eat? It could be the profound disconnect between the priorities of food movement leaders and those of food movement consumer participants. . .

For consumers . . . environmental, farmworker and animal welfare concerns take a back seat to their overwhelming first priority: their family’s health. . .

Is there a food movement? Hallman at Rutgers says there is, but he says “it is much smaller than is assumed by many in government and the food industry”. . .

Read full, original post: The surprising truth about the ‘food movement’

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