do people notice food labels?

[xchrom]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/11/do-people-care-where-their-meat-comes-from.html



Starting Saturday, companies that sell meat in grocery stores will have to label where the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered. It used to be enough to know that you were buying a hamburger or a steak. Since 2009, meat companies have also had to provide some vague information about origins—for instance, that a product came from North America. Now, you’re about to discover the whole life story of the animal you’re about to eat—and often you’ll learn that it came from abroad.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that meat is part of an increasingly complex global supply chain. The total number of U.S. cattle is the smallest it has been since the nineteen-fifties, partly because of high feed costs and drought. The number of ranchers has been declining, too. On average, they are in their late fifties; fewer young people are interested in the tough, often unprofitable line of work. But Americans are still eating plenty of meat, and it has to come from somewhere. Mexico’s abundant forage has given it a comparative advantage, and cheaper transportation—in Mexico, in Canada, and elsewhere—has made it more economical to ship cattle long distances.

The labelling rule, set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, applies only to grocery stores (and not in restaurants and other food-service establishments). The rule also carves out exceptions for food that has been processed—including meat that has been cured and smoked. Still, it will make meat more similar to other products, whose labels increasingly indicate whether your coffee is Fair Trade, whether your shirt was sewn under good working conditions, and whether your tomato was grown within two hundred miles of your grocery store. All this attention to labelling raises a question: How much do people care about it?

Those in favor of country-of-origin labels often cite a 2003 study, published in the Journal of Food Distribution Research, in which seventy-three per cent of people surveyed said they would pay an eleven-per-cent premium for steak with country-of-origin labelling and a nineteen-per-cent premium for a steak labelled “U.S.A. Guaranteed.” And a 2012 study by Boston Consulting Group found that eighty per cent of Americans surveyed said they would pay up to sixty per cent more for products labelled “Made in the USA.” But while people may say that they prefer products labelled with some desirable attribute, a growing body of research calls into question whether people’s behaviors fall in line with their intentions.

[unblock]

1. most ignore labels i'm sure, but i certainly scrutinize them!

i have always had migraine triggers that i need to avoid, and now i have a son with a peanut/tree nut allergy. so yeah, i read labels very carefully.

i'm a pescatarian now, so i no longer eat meat, and i find it a bit amusing that the slaughtering location is now on the label. i'm reminded of marisa tomei's wonderful scene from "my cousin vinny", when joe pesci is deciding what clothes to wear for a hunting trip:

"Imagine you're a deer. You're prancing along, you get thirsty, you spot a little brook, you put your little deer lips down to the cool clear water... BAM! A fuckin bullet rips off part of your head! Your brains are laying on the ground in little bloody pieces! Now I ask ya. Would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son of a bitch who shot you was wearing?"

[onehandle]

2. I want an additional law that puts a giant label on foods that says: WARNING! MADE IN CHINA!

It's almost impossible to find Edamame that's not imported from Asia.

Which is insane, because America is the #1 producer of soybeans.

[Niceguy1]

3. I don't mind asia

As long as it isn't china

[onehandle]

5. Many of the the countries around China, buy base foods from them, and process them as their own. nt

[longship]

4. Yup! Cap'n Crunch is a fraud.

The number of stripes on his sleeves indicate that he is a commander.

Always read those labels.

[Art_from_Ark]

6. And yet, I can easily buy beef in Japan

that was produced in the United States.

[hobbit709]

7. I doubt a large percentage can even read.

[RKP5637]

9. Yep, they will need pictures on products of their stereotypical concepts of

what everyone looks like in the respective country.

[Brickbat]

8. I do. I don't buy food made in China. And if it doesn't say where it's manufactured, I don't buy it.

If it says "distributed by" a U.S. company but doesn't list country of origin, I don't buy it until I can check online where it was made.

[RKP5637]

10. As the US loves to outsource to other countries any conceivable thing, and import

all that can be ... it's going to be harder to find US made food items IMO. Already just for seafood it seems more and more limited for US products. I guess the other question is, does just knowing the country imply quality and safety. One definitely on my list would be not to buy from China.

[In_The_Wind]

11. I've been reading labels for over 30 years.

I care about where my money goes.

There was a time when dining out I would ask my server to find out where my steak came from.

[Arkansas Granny]

12. I read labels. I want to know what I'm eating and the more info

the better IMO.