Health and disease problems related to food consumption are motivating consumers around the world to
choose diets that promote healthy outcomes. Recent research show that healthiness is a major quality
dimension when consumers evaluate food products, and healthy eating has become a major topic in the
public discourse on food and drink(30). As a consequence, it is increasingly significant to determine the
factors that influence consumer behavior and his/her attitudes regarding healthy foods in order to verify
the opportunities for further expansion of this segment.
From the consumer point of view, the success of healthy foods relies on a number of inter-relating factors,
including the level of concern about general health and specific medical conditions, the belief that it is
possible to influence one’s own health and awareness and knowledge of foods/ingredients that are
supposed to be beneficial.
The results of the current research reveal that Italian consumers have a good awareness of the links
between food habits, healthiness of food and personal health, although they are not always willing to
forego the pleasure of what they consume and continue to give taste a predominant role in their food
choices. As confirmed by other studies that also pointed to the primary role of taste as a factor that directs
consumers’ food choice in general (31; 32) .
At the same time, however, results confirm the strong interest on nutritional aspects of food and for
products with a healthy image, as corroborated by the attention shown for functional and organic foods.
However, when analyzing the propensity of respondents to these two product categories some confusion
in relation to their characteristics still persist, in particular for functional foods.
Undoubtedly, the descriptive analysis highlights a greater familiarity of the respondents towards organic
products, the majority of respondents in fact stated the correct definition of organic production and has
declared a higher consumption propensity compared to functional foods.
Moreover, with respect to consuming motivations the results derived from this analysis show that
consumers purchase functional and organic foods mainly for health reasons; they assume that these
products are healthier than conventional products. Specifically, as shown extensively in the literature,
food safety and health were very dominant organic buying motivations across most European
nations