Healthy Eating Trends Around the World

With feedback from more than 25,000 online respondents from 56 countries around the world, this repot reveals how consumers are battling the bulge and how food producers and marketers can help fight the good fight against obesity. According to the study, 59 percent of consumers around the world have difficulty understanding nutritional labels on food packaging and more than half (53%) consider themselves overweight.

About the study
The Nielsen Global Survey of Food Labeling Trends was conducted in March/April 2011 and in August/September 2011 and polled more than 25,000 consumers in 56 countries throughout Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and North America. The sample has quotas based on age and sex for each country based on their Internet users, and is weighted to be representative of Internet consumers and has a maximum margin of error of ±0.6%. This Nielsen survey is based on the behavior of respondents with online access only. Internet penetration rates vary by country. Nielsen uses a minimum reporting standard of 60 percent Internet penetration or 10M online population for survey inclusion. The Nielsen Global Survey was established in 2005.

If you examine the global pantry item by item, you may be surprised to learn that diets all over the world contain pretty much the same foods. The choices, whether you're in Madrid, Spain or Minnesota, or Provencal or Pasadena, basically consist of meat, poultry, fish, dairy, grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables.

The big “aha” comes when we learn that what matters is not so much what foods we eat, as how we eat them.

“It's not just the calories, or just the fat, or just the desserts,” Jonas tells WebMD. “It's the whole mentality that swarms around our food culture that is making the biggest difference of all.”

Nutritionist Samantha Heller, MS, RD, agrees.

“You have to look at the whole picture of how we, as a nation, advertise food, consume food, and use food in our culture before you can really begin to understand how we are different from other countries,” says Heller, a senior clinical nutritionist at New York University Medical Center.