Healthy motivations for food consumption in 16 countries

There are many factors that can influence people’s attitudes towards healthy eating, including personal nature, sociodemographic influences, and lifestyle. This work investigated to what extent the motivations for healthy food consumption are shaped in individuals from different countries. A questionnaire survey was carried out on a sample of 11,919 participants from 16 countries. The results indicated that the strongest motivations for healthy food consumption were related to the perception of consuming healthy food, eating foods rich in vitamins and minerals, allied to food safety and hygiene concerns. Significant differences were found in healthy motivations between countries. Additionally, the sociodemographic variables that had a higher influence on health motivation levels were country, age, and gender. Concerning the anthropometric and lifestyle variables influencing healthy motivation for food consumption, the discriminating variables were: believing in having a healthy diet, physical exercise, and chronic diseases. In conclusion, the work showed important differences in the motivations for a healthy diet in different countries, but other variables also play a role in the motivation for the consumption of foods for health and well-being.

Description

This work was prepared in the ambit of themultinational project EATMOT from CI&DETS Research Centre (Polytechnic University of Viseu, Portugal) with reference PROJ/CI&DETS/CGD/0012. This work was supported by the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P. Furthermore, we would like to thank the Research Centers CERNAS (doi: 10.54499/UIDB/00681/2020), CIDEI (doi: 10.54499/UIDB/05507/2020), and UCISA:E (doi: 10.54499/UIDB/00742/2020), and the Polytechnic University of Viseu for their support. We thank the contribution of Viktoria Szűcs for helping collect data for the project in Hungary, and Lucia Frez-Muñoz for helping collect data for the project in The Netherlands.