During 2019, the Italian press, web, TV and radio dealt with 1.373.312 times of the same topic: food. This is what emerges from the first report on food information in the Italian media, presented on February 20 at the start of the work of the fifth edition of the Food Journalism Festival.
The Report was produced by L'Eco della Stampa, a historic Italian company, a leader in media intelligence and press review since 1901, analyzing 350.000 sources and 1 million content per day. Objective: to measure the impact of food issues on the media, to intercept the most discussed topics and to analyze the methods of information.
In Italy, food represents a large slice of culture and daily life. Thanks to the new media, everyone speaks and writes about food, and more and more. "We thought it was necessary to measure with objective data how much space food issues occupy on the media - explained Massimiliano Borgia director of the Food Journalism Festival. - We believe that these data can be useful to those who make information in Italy, to decide in which direction to go. The theme is strategic, also in function of the evolution of the channels and communication tools. Despite the difficulties faced by the media, in recent years we have witnessed the growth, against the trend, of the number of means and spaces dedicated to information on food. "
Here are some highlights from the first report on food information in the Italian media:
1.373.312: the times the media dealt with food in 2019 (web: 729.357; press: 524.488; radio: 88.555; tv: 30.912). If for radio and television the trend during the year was constant, the peak of information on food on the web and in the press was recorded in the month of October (respectively: 74.546 and 58.782 publications): in this period there were numerous publications related to the Unicef 2019 Report on Children, food and nutrition (very present on the web) and to the Steve McCurry exhibition dedicated to food in Forlì, which has obtained a lot of space in the press.
In 2019 food represented the 13,5% of the information related to the Made in Italy theme, which produced almost total 300 thousand publications. As part of the debate, over 200 thousand publications concern the designations of origin: DOC (over 90 thousand), followed by DOP (over 62 thousand), PGI (over 36 thousand) and DOCG (over 27 thousand).
Nutrition - health binomial
The Festival, which also and above all deals with information related to, wanted to bring out the data relating to the binomial nutrition - health. Analyzing the publications relating to the diseases mentioned several times in relation to nutrition, they have been almost 94 thousand those who conjugated food with "diabetes", "tumor" and "obesity". The report also highlighted which type of food has been associated most frequently with the same diseases (fruit and vegetables, meat, dairy products and fish).
From doggy bag to food bag
Finally, the Festival is closely committed to the major current affairs that concern food content. During 2019, thanks to a general growing sensitivity towards sustainability issues, the topic of food waste began to make space among the contents. Just a couple of weeks ago, presenting the V edition, the organizers of the Festival launched a petition on Change.Org to make the use of the "Food Bag" mandatory, the box that every restaurateur should deliver to customers to bring home the paid and uneaten food. A theme not yet felt: 321 was referred to as a "doggybag" times in Italy, compared to over 1000 in the world.
There is more talk about food than politics
The data were presented to the crowded audience of information professionals and medical professions in the panel moderated by Tarcisio Mazzeo, Chief Editor of TGR Rai Piemonte. Alessandro Cederle, Director of L'Eco della Stampa commented: "There is a lot of talk about food in the media, a real informative bulimia that characterizes the press such as the web, radio and TV. The data that emerged from our other research, compared with this new report, they tell us that there is much more talk about food than politics, even considering a period such as that of the European elections held in 2019. Much space is dedicated to the topic of safety and food-related diseases or that the Nutrition can solve, however, it should be noted that the great attention of the northern media is matched by the lack of attention from central Italy, as well as issues such as vegan and vegetarian nutrition, widespread among the population, are overlooked in favor of the Mediterranean diet A conversation between "info" and "tainment", a difficult balance on a theme so rich in social, cultural and even ethical aspects. "
From consumer to consumer-actor
The data of the first report on food and media were commented by Guia Beatrice Pirotti, SDA Bocconi professor and coordinator of the Master of Management in Food & Beverage "A first socially interesting aspect is that food is lived, it becomes experience, it is part of life everyday, no longer as simply functional consumption - having to feed oneself - but also and above all as an experiential good, able to aggregate people. And there is an increasingly shared partnership between the end user and companies, up to the co-creation of food and drinks. The consumer wants to have his say, he is no longer just looking at what food & beverage companies do. More and more he wants to express an opinion, to be involved already in the product conception phase. Become a consumer actor and companies use social media or online communities to promote new ideas and new products by listening to what the consumer says. "
Final curiosity emerged from the Report: the most quoted chef is Gordon Ramsay, followed by Alessandro Borghese and JoeBastianich.
