Consumers’ Awareness Towards Functional Foods with an Example in Adana City

Functional foods are beneficial to the nutritional needs with the help of the components that they naturally contain.besides this they also contain beneficial biological elements, they can be effective in protecting diseases, can be free of the elements that may have negative impacts on the life functions and they improve the life quality. this study aims to create a perspective on the consumer behaviours regarding their awareness and acceptance of the functional foods in çukurova, sarıçam,seyhan and yüreğir districts of adana city. for this purpose, a survey was conducted with 148 consumers in çukurova, sarıçam,seyhan and yüreğir districts of adana in 2015. according to the results of the survey, 57.4% of the respondents were women,53.4% were between the ages of 26-45, and 56.8% were high school graduates. it has been determined that individuals who participated in the survey were aware of the functional foods (30.4%), but did not know that these foods were functional foods (50.7%) also the three most functional food items can be listed as mineral water, herbal teas, and mineral supplemented milk respectively. it has been determined that a study would contribute to increasethe functional foods consumption and the consumer awareness.