Consumers’ Awareness, Acceptance and Attitudes towards Functional Foods: A Research in Izmır City

Functional food term defines the foods that provide further benefits to human physiology and metabolic functions in addition to their nutritional function. Consequently, they have health promoting and disease preventing effects. The objective of this study is to have an insight into the Turkish consumers’ perceptions by revealing their awareness, acceptance and attitudes toward functional foods. The data is collected through a survey from the academic staff working in the universities of Izmir city. The findings show that the most widely used functional foods are, respectively, mineral water, diet cereal biscuit and cereal flake. The health related reasons that make consumers use functional foods are, respectively, functional foods increase healty gut bacteria, functional foods help to lose weight and functional foods help child development. There is a difference between consumers who have heard about “functional food term” before and who have not heard it before, in terms of the “reward” dimension of Functional Food Related Attitudes scale. Contributions to the literature and practice are discussed. Besides, the limitations and the suggestions for future research are presented.