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From 2012.igem.org

The Food Warden sticker, containing our modified Bacillus bacteria, could be perceived as a potential product. Therefore, we decided to conduct a market research survey, where we ask the respondents questions about their general food habits and if they would be interested in Food Warden as a possible product on the market. We also ask if they consider using a GMO-containing sticker next to food as safe. We used the surveygizmo survey engine for this task.

The respondents

We received a total of 167 responses to the survey. Most of our respondents (56.3%) were 16-25 years of age, 22.2% of the respondents were older than 40, and 21% of age between 26 and 40. Only one respondent (0.6%) was younger than 16 years of age.
This portrays our respondent group as young crowd, and in fact we recruited many of our respondents from students of our university (however, of multiple faculties - these are not biology students only!)
Vast majority (77.2%) of the respondents answered that they go grocery shopping on their own, and do they cook on their own.

Also, most of them (88.6%) buy their meat at the supermarket. The biggest group of the respondents buys meat two-three times a week (36.5%), or almost everyday (27.5%). Overall, more respondents buy food products in smaller amounts, only what they need immediately, even if it costs more (54.5%) compared to buying bigger ("family") packages to save money (45.5%).

Best before dates and food waste

The opinions of the respondents on "best before" dates were split: 52.1% does not think that such dates give an accurate measure of food edibility, while 47.9% believes they do. According to our survey results, many of the respondents throw away food - if they are not certain if it is good - relatively rarely (once a month - 46.1%, never or almost never - 21%). However, roughly a third of the respondents admits they do that often (29.3% - few times a month, 3.6% - more than once a week).

Click to download full survey report