InFlOOD

About InFlOOD

About InFlOOD

Background

Nowadays, people come across a growing amount of ‘food media messages’1, i.e. mass-mediated messages concerning food and eating, excluding traditional advertising and health campaigns. These messages have expanded throughout all different formats on both traditional channels, such as TV or magazines, and non-traditional channels, such as Instagram and Pinterest2. The overflow of messages about food, of which many are not evidence-based3 and sometimes even contradict each other, causes many people to no longer see the forest for the trees4.

Aim

The aim of InFlOOD is to investigate how to communicate clearly and persuasively in a context with a sprawl of information on food, which incites polarisation. What can we learn from the the strong communicators in the food landscape, so we can use their tools to promote a balanced life-style in the best way possible?  

Research questions

We investigate 3 research questions, namely (1) what do consumers think is lacking in communication initiatives from the health sector, (2) what we can learn from successful examples such as food gurus and influencers, and (3) can we define a consumer segmentation, and if so which communication strategies would fit best per group.

Stakeholders

In order to achieve this project, we are working together with 4 universities and many stakeholders, among which health organisations and important players in the food industry. If you're interested in who our partners are, click here. 
 

Sources cited

  1. Kirkwood, K. (2018). Integrating digital media into everyday culinary practices. Communication Research and Practice, 4(3), 277-290.
  2. Sharma, S. S., & De Choudhury, M. (2015, May). Measuring and characterizing nutritional information of food and ingestion content in instagram. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web (pp. 115-116).
  3. (Korthals, 2017)
  4. Spiteri Cornish, L., & Moraes, C. (2015). The impact of consumer confusion on nutrition literacy and subsequent dietary behavior. Psychology & Marketing, 32(5), 558-574.