Cost, origin, taste: what influences our food choices?
Science on the Menu: A Food Safety Podcast by EFSA
European Food Safety Authority
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🗓️ 19 November 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
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Summary
What’s most important to you when you buy food? Is it how much it costs, how it tastes, where it comes from or something else? In this episode, we’re exploring the results of our latest Eurobarometer survey, how the survey is conducted and what it tells us about our food choices.
We’ll look at where we get our information about food and whether concerns over food safety vary across Europe. And we’ll learn how social science research at EFSA improves how food safety risks are assessed and communicated. Join us as we unpack our behaviour at the supermarket.
Host: Edward Bray, Communications Officer in the Communication Unit at EFSA
Guest: Joana Sousa Lourenco, Social Scientist in the Communication Unit at EFSA
Disclaimer: Views expressed by interviewees do not necessarily represent the official position of the European Food Safety Authority. All content is up to date at the time of publication.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So we have other data that speaks also to, let's say, broader context. |
| 0:06.3 | We have data, for example, showing that quite a substantial proportion of individuals, like |
| 0:12.6 | four in ten, actually take for granted that the food sold is safe. |
| 0:16.7 | So I think that's part of the reason where it comes for because it's still quite an important topic in people's mind. |
| 0:27.6 | Hello and welcome to another episode of Science on the Menu. |
| 0:33.6 | My name is Ed Bray and I work in the communications team at EFSA and joining me today |
| 0:39.7 | is Joanna Loringko. Thank you very much for joining us. Joanna, how are you today? Very well. |
| 0:46.2 | Thank you for having me. So today we're going to be talking about food choices and the things that |
| 0:50.9 | people think about when it comes to food, purchasing food, what are their |
| 0:54.8 | concerns, etc. We're also going to look at social science. You're a social scientist. You're |
| 1:01.3 | going to explain what that means in terms of a regulatory agency like EFSA. And I think you've got |
| 1:07.0 | a surprise for me as well in the form of a quiz. Is that right? Yes, that's right. |
| 1:16.2 | We'll get into it further ahead, I think. Okay, perfect. So let's start with the research that we've recently done on that. Eurobarometer. Tell me about that, Sean. What is it exactly? Why do we do this? |
| 1:23.3 | The Eurobarometer is a large-scale survey. We ran it in the 27 member states, and it's running |
| 1:31.0 | the national languages. So in 2025, we had a sample of over 26,000 respondents. And it's one survey |
| 1:39.2 | that we run face-to-face, which is often considered the golden standards for surveys. |
| 1:45.5 | Now, because we have such a large sample and also because of the methodology, it gives us really high confidence in the results. |
| 1:51.2 | So tell us, what are some of the, like, top-level conclusions about when it comes to food, |
| 1:57.1 | what people are thinking about? We have data on different aspects. |
| 2:01.3 | So if I think of data that we have on things that people care the most when they make |
| 2:07.8 | their food purchases decisions, here we really have costs coming at the top with six in |
| 2:15.1 | 10, considering it's important. |
... |
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