The lead story in the Specialty Foods newsletter today really caught my eye. “Some 52% of consumers are monitoring the amount of sodium in their diets and 26% read labels for sodium.” This seems simply incredible on the face of it, especially in the context of my new home in upstate New York where 77.8% of the populace pays no attention whatsoever to what goes into their gullet.
Seeking understanding, I follow the link to its source — Mintel, “a leading global supplier of consumer, product and media intelligence.” Here I find out that:
- 22% [of consumers] restrict the amount of salt that they add to food, but don’t watch the much greater amount of sodium that is in foods and beverages
- 18% say that “food and beverages low in sodium are one of the three most important components of a healthy diet”
- 26% read labels for sodium, and may make some decisions based on this info, but they are not following a regimen to control sodium in their diet
- 34% do not pay attention to sodium
Except for the last stat (which seems low), none of these numbers seems at all credible to me on a seat-of-the-pants basis. Do they to you? Perhaps this is some research from a survey that is skewed to make a particular marketing point? So let’s look at the original source material, the verbatim comments from the survey. Oops, they aren’t available. Instead Mintel offers a link to a webinar where we can learn about “Sodium: The Next Trans Fat?”
High school debaters learn that with a little digging, they can find a “statistic” to support any point of view. Perhaps in the Mintel survey, and I’m stipulating that there was one, they asked people “do you ever think about the amount of sodium in your diet?” and 52% said yes. That would still be a high number, but I’d accept it. Then maybe some creative marcom copywriter changed it to “monitor” which recasts the same stat as alarming or fascinating news.
One of my earliest bosses promised he was going to teach me to “lie with statistics”. I didn’t last very long at that position and don’t know what happened to that boss. Hmm…