Health and nutrition information for the berry industry (MT21000)

What was it all about?

This investment delivered evidence-based information about the health benefits of fresh berries to health professionals in Australia. By improving the awareness, knowledge and attitude of health professionals to the nutrition and health benefits of fresh berries, they will be encouraged to recommend fresh berries to their clients and ultimately help to drive purchase and consumption.

Challenge

Berries have an impressive nutrient profile score and are one of the highest dietary sources of polyphenols, however their perceived high price point and short shelf life are key consumer barriers to consumption. There is an opportunity to educate health care professionals on the specific berry nutrition science and their culinary uses to help overcome these barriers by showcasing that despite their small size, berries are big on benefits.

Response

The project team conducted scientific research to underpin all activities, developed resources and delivered a communications program to educate health professionals on berries.

Key outputs included the completion of a literature review of berries and health outcomes; development of seven health professional-focused resources (fact sheets, infographics, social tiles, educational animation), establishment of an online resource hub and engaged health professional database, an engaging communication plan (including eight emails), digital outreach campaign and three educational activities (influencer online event, Dietitians’ Conference and FOODiQ webinar); and ongoing evaluation via two audience sentiment research (ASR) surveys at baseline and project end.

Benefit

This project demonstrated that the nutrition and health benefits of berries are important drivers of consumption, hence validating efforts to drive awareness of these with health professionals, as a valuable strategy to unlocking and driving industry growth.

The project increased health professional knowledge of nutrition and health benefits of berries along with their intent to recommend to clients.  Specifically:

• The number of health professionals that were very familiar with the nutrition and health benefits of berries (63 per cent and 69 per cent respectively) increased by over a third during the project.
  
  
• Resources were key to health professionals’ familiarity and confidence. Health professionals were nearly twice as likely to be very confident regarding the nutrition and health benefits of berries if they accessed the resources than if they didn’t.
  
  
• Across the board there were 10-30 per cent increases in knowledge on nutrition and health benefits. 
  
  
• At the end of the project, three in four health professionals reported they recommend berries ‘always or often’ to their clients compared to just over half (58 per cent) at the start of the project. 
  
  
• Twenty-five per cent of health professionals had accessed the resources with 100 per cent finding them useful.