Tom Neltner, Senior Director, Safer Chemicals
For the eighth year in a row, consumers rated chemicals as their top food safety concern according to the annual industry survey of consumer perspectives on food issues. In the survey conducted in March 2022, 48% of consumers rated chemicals as their top category of food safety concern – about the same as 2021 – compared to 22% for foodborne illness from bacteria. The chemicals category includes: cancer-causing chemicals (15%); pesticides (13%); food additives and ingredients (11%); and heavy metals (9%).
Last year, we examined the International Food Information Council’s (IFIC) 2021 Food and Health Survey in detail. Our takeaway was that consumers continue to be concerned about chemicals in food, partly because they lack confidence that the federal government is actually ensuring additives—like artificial sweeteners—are safe. (Nearly 70% didn’t know that’s the government’s role).
As a result, consumers do their best to protect their health and safety by avoiding ingredients that sound like chemicals—the only way they see to control the perceived risk. In reaction to consumer concerns, some food companies have undertaken “clean label” programs, which, according to a 2017 analysis by Center for Science in the Public Interest, either remove these ingredients (which can be helpful if the removed ingredients are unsafe) or use names that do not sound like chemicals (which obscures the facts and can be misleading).