Most consumers are much more worried about food safety in meat products than they are concerned about fruit and vegetable safety.
That was one observation in the Food Safety and Nutrition Survey, the FDA’s premier, national probability consumer survey.
Results of the survey are available on the FDA website.
According to the survey, FDA said consumers think people are more likely to get a foodborne illness from food prepared at a restaurant than food prepared at home. The survey said few consumers (15%) thought it was “very common” for people to get food poisoning because of the way food is prepared at home, compared to 29% who thought it was “very common” to get food poisoning because of the way food is prepared in restaurants.
In another finding, consumers are more concerned about raw chicken and raw beef than raw vegetables or fruit being contaminated.
“More respondents thought that raw chicken (93%) and raw beef (66%) were “likely or highly likely” to have germs than raw vegetables (9%) or fruit (6%),” the report said.
The survey found most consumers are familiar with the Nutrition Facts label, with 87% of respondents have looked at the label on food packages. The top four items that consumers look for on the label are calories, total sugar, sodium, and serving size.
The FDA said consumers report using the label most frequently for seeing “how high or low the food is in things like calories, salt, vitamins, or fat,” “for getting a general idea of the nutritional content of the food,” and “to compare different food items with each other.”
