Despite 50 Years of Knowledge of Actual Versus Perceived Risk, Public Fear Persists of Contaminated Foods

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Authors

  • Sweta Chakraborty Millennium Fellow, The Atlantic Council, 1030 15 St NW, Washington, DC 20005, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17140/SBRPOJ-4-118

Keywords:

Perceived Risk, Food, actual risk

Abstract

Irrational overreactions to the food we eat are commonplace these days, despite food scientists’ and regulators’ best efforts at communicating actual risk associated with consuming foods to be significantly low. This is because we can detect toxins in foods to the parts per billion, which has advanced significantly since we were only able to detect to contaminants to the parts per million.

References

World Health Organization (WHO). Dioxins and their effect on human health. Web site. https://www.who.int/news-room/ fact-sheets/detail/dioxins-and-their-effects-on-human-health. Ac-cessed October 16, 2019.

Kasperson RE, Renn O, Slovic P, et al. The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework. Risk Analysis. 1988; 8: 177-187. doi: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.1988.tb01168.x

Slovic P, Peters E, Grana J, Berger S, Dieck GS. Risk percep-tion of prescription drugs: Results of a national survey. Drug Inf J. 2007; 41: 81-100. doi: 10.1177/009286150704100110

Tversky A, Kahneman D. Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology. 1973; 5: 207-232. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9 Opinion | Volume 4 | Number 2|

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Published

2019-11-05

How to Cite

Sweta Chakraborty. (2019). Despite 50 Years of Knowledge of Actual Versus Perceived Risk, Public Fear Persists of Contaminated Foods. Social Behavior Research and Practice, 4(2), 26–27. https://doi.org/10.17140/SBRPOJ-4-118

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 2 (2019): Volume 4 Issue 2 2019

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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