It should be borne in mind, however, that out of 

 consideration of prestige, respondents may give other reasons 

 for non-use when the real reason is actually cost of the product. 

 Corroborative evidence was furnished by the fact that the lowest 

 income groups consistently mentioned price as a reason for non- 

 use about twice as often as the average household. Big families, 

 farm families and non-white families also showed this greater than 

 average frequency. Referring back to the tabulations on average 

 number of servings in various types of households, it is noted 

 that the average number of times any kind of canned fishery product 

 was served in the course of a week was much smaller among families 

 with incomes of less than $3*000 than among those with incomes of 

 $7,000 or over. Also, it is noted that while there is very little 

 difference by income in consumption of salmon, probably because the 

 data do not differentiate between red and pink salmon, in the case 

 of tuna, the top-income group served it about twice as often as the 

 low-income group . 



In the discussions which follow for each of the four main 

 canned fishery products on which detailed information was solicited 

 from regjondents a brief summary is given of sane of the salient 

 findings other than those already presented. 



Canned Tuna - Principal Findings 



1. Purchase and Stocks of Tuna . More tuna buyers (k2%) 

 purchased two cans at once and about 32$ purchased 3 or more. Most 

 households had little or no stock on their pantry shelves at the time 

 of the survey. 



2. White and Lir;ht Meat . White and light meat tuna were 

 about equally popular in the country as a whole. White meat was more 

 favored among very high- income consumers and in the Northeast. Light 

 meat was twice as popular as white in the North Central Region and 

 among lower- income groups. 



3. Tuna Packed in Brine . Most respondents showed little 

 use of, experience with or interest in tuna packed in brine. However, 

 the small percent who did use tuna in brine were quite definite in 

 their preference. It should -be noted that only 11$ of total tuna 

 users had ever tasted this product and the percentage preferring tuna 

 in brine is 7»1» 



h» Ways of Serving Tuna . Salads and sandwiches were by 

 far the most popular ways of serving canned tuna with casseroles 

 running a distant third. The pattern in the West was sharply different 



17 



