Amid the recent spate of food scares, nearly 85 percent of respondents in a survey said they believe they have consumed products made using adulterated ingredients, with about 60 percent vowing to boycott such items indefinitely.
The survey, which polled 1,092 office workers between Oct. 2 and Thursday, was conducted by the 1111 Job Bank to gauge the public’s level of anxiety in the wake of the nation’s flaring cooking oil scandals.
About 84.6 percent of respondents said they had eaten food that has been implicated as problematic in the scandals, consisting mainly of items containing adulterated lard, cottonseed oil and phthalate plasticizer di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Despite growing public discontent over the nation’s continual food scares, only 40.6 percent of those polled said they have contemplated getting a full refund for products named in the scandals.
Of those, only 8.6 percent got their money back, with 59.4 percent saying they opted not to since a refund would not alter the fact that they had consumed foods tainted with potentially harmful substances. Another 29.7 percent said they had failed to find the receipts needed to make a claim and 2.3 percent attempted to get a refund, but were turned down by store owners.
In addition, 47.4 percent of those polled said they were terrified by the string of food scares, while 33.5 percent reported feeling scared, 13.9 percent experiencing anxiety and 4.8 percent feeling uneasy. Only 0.4 percent said they were not affected by the incidents at all.
Asked to measure their level of fear over food scares on a scale from zero to 100, the respondents gave an average score of 75.
About 58.5 percent of those polled vowed to continue boycotting problematic products even after the current food scandal fades away, while 29.7 percent said the matter depends on the “level of malevolence” displayed by implicated food companies.
In addition, more than 90 percent of participants said they have made multiple changes to their lifestyles and dietary habits because of the incidents, such as reducing the frequency of eating out (56.9 percent), opting for lightly seasoned foods (47.7 percent) and exercising more frequently (28.7 percent), the survey showed.
The online poll had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus-2.96 percentage points.
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