EATWELL results: how can private sector marketing techniques help improve public health?

The EU funded project EATWELL (Interventions to Promote Healthy Eating Habits: Evaluation and Recommendations) aims to provide European Member States with best practice guidelines for developing policy interventions to encourage healthy eating across Europe.

To meet this aim EATWELL has investigated the national policy interventions that have been used to encourage physical activity and healthy eating in European Union Member States.

But what can we learn from the private sector, which has considerable experience with tools designed to influence consumer food choice? Part of the EATWELL project was to carry out an investigation of private sector marketing techniques to consider whether these may be applicable to public efforts to promote healthier eating.

In this interview with EUFIC, Jessica Aschemann-Witzel from Aarhus University, Denmark describes the findings of this area of research.

Jessica Aschemann-Witzel (Aarhus University, DK)

Jessica Aschemann-Witzel is Assistant Professor and researcher at MAPP - Centre for Research on Customer Relations in the Food Sector, at Aarhus University. She has been working on research projects on organic food marketing and consumer behaviour towards health claims. She is currently working on nutritional labelling and healthy eating promotion. At the University, she teaches marketing communication at Master level.

EATWELL - Interventions to Promote Healthy Eating Habits: Evaluation and Recommendations, is funded by the European Commission under FP 7.