Open Access

Evelyn Bugnagel

• The market for foods and beverages is one of the largest worldwide. Thus, there is a lot of interest in understanding and predicting consumer behavior. Two subjects that have gained attention recently in the food sector are perceived naturalness and high-tech eco-innovations like cultured meat. This work addresses how the preference for natural products and the inference of product attributes via perceived naturalness causes problems for novel technological food products. By reviewing existing literature following questions will be answered: (1) What do most people assume about the health, taste, sustainability, and safety of food products based on perceived naturalness? (2) How is the public acceptance of high-tech food eco-innovations influenced by a lack of perceived naturalness? (3) How can these challenges be addressed by food businesses? It will first be determined what natural means for customers and how it influences food choices in general. The main findings based on the currently available market research are consumers do not desire to consume any highly unnatural foods including technological eco-innovations and it might be more efficient in terms of sustainability gains and customer needs to commit resources to developing existing products or eco-innovations that are perceived to be natural.