The reflections of health risks perceptions on food consumptions: A case of Eskişehir

Food industry, which developed in order to respond the increasing food needs of the rapidly growing World population in the second half of the 20. Century, rised a number of health related problems. Mainly including the hygien of both the food and the place in which food is produced and the uncertainity of the additive ingredients, these problems caused ambugity of information and raised health related fears. The lack of food security made people anxious and fearful about foods, thus created a trust erosion which made the consumers concern about food consumption. Drawing upon the data of a quantitative and qualitative research conducted in Turkey, the aim of this research is to examine the relationship between the socio-economic structure and consumers' fear, anxiety and trust levels. The population consists of 400 people from four districs of Eskisehir, which represent two different socio-economic status groups and the data is gathered by questionairres and structured interviews. Drawing on this data, this study aims to analyse how risk attitudes are reflected on the food consumption and to point the relationship between the food consumtion attitutes and socio-economic background. The study in short, aims to find out and what kind of effects do anxiety, fear and risks have on peoples' consuming behaviour and emphasize the changes in peoples' consuming attitudes when they are aware of the surrounding risks. In this study's consequences, the consumers' who have different social and economical class, don't give same answers. In general, almost all have health risks, have a suspicion at comsumed food and not have count on farmers and firms. While income rises, the organic consumption rises too. And they believe that, the foods which have a different gene, cause to different diseases. The consumers must be conscious on food consumption. Keywords: Food Security, Health, Risk, Fear, Trust and Food Consumption