research on food habits

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• My Account Login
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Open access
• Published: 06 December 2017

Healthy food choices are happy food choices: Evidence from a real life sample using smartphone based assessments

• Deborah R. Wahl 1   na1 ,
• Karoline Villinger 1   na1 ,
• Laura M. König   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3655-8842 1 ,
• Katrin Ziesemer 1 ,
• Harald T. Schupp 1 &
• Britta Renner 1  

Scientific Reports volume  7 , Article number:  17069 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

132k Accesses

54 Citations

262 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Health sciences
• Human behaviour

Research suggests that “healthy” food choices such as eating fruits and vegetables have not only physical but also mental health benefits and might be a long-term investment in future well-being. This view contrasts with the belief that high-caloric foods taste better, make us happy, and alleviate a negative mood. To provide a more comprehensive assessment of food choice and well-being, we investigated in-the-moment eating happiness by assessing complete, real life dietary behaviour across eight days using smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment. Three main findings emerged: First, of 14 different main food categories, vegetables consumption contributed the largest share to eating happiness measured across eight days. Second, sweets on average provided comparable induced eating happiness to “healthy” food choices such as fruits or vegetables. Third, dinner elicited comparable eating happiness to snacking. These findings are discussed within the “food as health” and “food as well-being” perspectives on eating behaviour.

Similar content being viewed by others

Effects of single plant-based vs. animal-based meals on satiety and mood in real-world smartphone-embedded studies

Eating Style and the Frequency, Size and Timing of Eating Occasions: A cross-sectional analysis using 7-day weighed dietary records

Interindividual variability in appetitive sensations and relationships between appetitive sensations and energy intake

Introduction.

When it comes to eating, researchers, the media, and policy makers mainly focus on negative aspects of eating behaviour, like restricting certain foods, counting calories, and dieting. Likewise, health intervention efforts, including primary prevention campaigns, typically encourage consumers to trade off the expected enjoyment of hedonic and comfort foods against health benefits 1 . However, research has shown that diets and restrained eating are often counterproductive and may even enhance the risk of long-term weight gain and eating disorders 2 , 3 . A promising new perspective entails a shift from food as pure nourishment towards a more positive and well-being centred perspective of human eating behaviour 1 , 4 , 5 . In this context, Block et al . 4 have advocated a paradigm shift from “food as health” to “food as well-being” (p. 848).

Supporting this perspective of “food as well-being”, recent research suggests that “healthy” food choices, such as eating more fruits and vegetables, have not only physical but also mental health benefits 6 , 7 and might be a long-term investment in future well-being 8 . For example, in a nationally representative panel survey of over 12,000 adults from Australia, Mujcic and Oswald 8 showed that fruit and vegetable consumption predicted increases in happiness, life satisfaction, and well-being over two years. Similarly, using lagged analyses, White and colleagues 9 showed that fruit and vegetable consumption predicted improvements in positive affect on the subsequent day but not vice versa. Also, cross-sectional evidence reported by Blanchflower et al . 10 shows that eating fruits and vegetables is positively associated with well-being after adjusting for demographic variables including age, sex, or race 11 . Of note, previous research includes a wide range of time lags between actual eating occasion and well-being assessment, ranging from 24 hours 9 , 12 to 14 days 6 , to 24 months 8 . Thus, the findings support the notion that fruit and vegetable consumption has beneficial effects on different indicators of well-being, such as happiness or general life satisfaction, across a broad range of time spans.

The contention that healthy food choices such as a higher fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with greater happiness and well-being clearly contrasts with the common belief that in particular high-fat, high-sugar, or high-caloric foods taste better and make us happy while we are eating them. When it comes to eating, people usually have a spontaneous “unhealthy = tasty” association 13 and assume that chocolate is a better mood booster than an apple. According to this in-the-moment well-being perspective, consumers have to trade off the expected enjoyment of eating against the health costs of eating unhealthy foods 1 , 4 .

A wealth of research shows that the experience of negative emotions and stress leads to increased consumption in a substantial number of individuals (“emotional eating”) of unhealthy food (“comfort food”) 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 . However, this research stream focuses on emotional eating to “smooth” unpleasant experiences in response to stress or negative mood states, and the mood-boosting effect of eating is typically not assessed 18 . One of the few studies testing the effectiveness of comfort food in improving mood showed that the consumption of “unhealthy” comfort food had a mood boosting effect after a negative mood induction but not to a greater extent than non-comfort or neutral food 19 . Hence, even though people may believe that snacking on “unhealthy” foods like ice cream or chocolate provides greater pleasure and psychological benefits, the consumption of “unhealthy” foods might not actually be more psychologically beneficial than other foods.

However, both streams of research have either focused on a single food category (fruit and vegetable consumption), a single type of meal (snacking), or a single eating occasion (after negative/neutral mood induction). Accordingly, it is unknown whether the boosting effect of eating is specific to certain types of food choices and categories or whether eating has a more general boosting effect that is observable after the consumption of both “healthy” and “unhealthy” foods and across eating occasions. Accordingly, in the present study, we investigated the psychological benefits of eating that varied by food categories and meal types by assessing complete dietary behaviour across eight days in real life.

Furthermore, previous research on the impact of eating on well-being tended to rely on retrospective assessments such as food frequency questionnaires 8 , 10 and written food diaries 9 . Such retrospective self-report methods rely on the challenging task of accurately estimating average intake or remembering individual eating episodes and may lead to under-reporting food intake, particularly unhealthy food choices such as snacks 7 , 20 . To avoid memory and bias problems in the present study we used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) 21 to obtain ecologically valid and comprehensive real life data on eating behaviour and happiness as experienced in-the-moment.

In the present study, we examined the eating happiness and satisfaction experienced in-the-moment, in real time and in real life, using a smartphone based EMA approach. Specifically, healthy participants were asked to record each eating occasion, including main meals and snacks, for eight consecutive days and rate how tasty their meal/snack was, how much they enjoyed it, and how pleased they were with their meal/snack immediately after each eating episode. This intense recording of every eating episode allows assessing eating behaviour on the level of different meal types and food categories to compare experienced eating happiness across meals and categories. Following the two different research streams, we expected on a food category level that not only “unhealthy” foods like sweets would be associated with high experienced eating happiness but also “healthy” food choices such as fruits and vegetables. On a meal type level, we hypothesised that the happiness of meals differs as a function of meal type. According to previous contention, snacking in particular should be accompanied by greater happiness.

Eating episodes

Overall, during the study period, a total of 1,044 completed eating episodes were reported (see also Table  1 ). On average, participants rated their eating happiness with M  = 77.59 which suggests that overall eating occasions were generally positive. However, experienced eating happiness also varied considerably between eating occasions as indicated by a range from 7.00 to 100.00 and a standard deviation of SD  = 16.41.

Food categories and experienced eating happiness

All eating episodes were categorised according to their food category based on the German Nutrient Database (German: Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel), which covers the average nutritional values of approximately 10,000 foods available on the German market and is a validated standard instrument for the assessment of nutritional surveys in Germany. As shown in Table  1 , eating happiness differed significantly across all 14 food categories, F (13, 2131) = 1.78, p  = 0.04. On average, experienced eating happiness varied from 71.82 ( SD  = 18.65) for fish to 83.62 ( SD  = 11.61) for meat substitutes. Post hoc analysis, however, did not yield significant differences in experienced eating happiness between food categories, p  ≥ 0.22. Hence, on average, “unhealthy” food choices such as sweets ( M  = 78.93, SD  = 15.27) did not differ in experienced happiness from “healthy” food choices such as fruits ( M  = 78.29, SD  = 16.13) or vegetables ( M  = 77.57, SD  = 17.17). In addition, an intraclass correlation (ICC) of ρ = 0.22 for happiness indicated that less than a quarter of the observed variation in experienced eating happiness was due to differences between food categories, while 78% of the variation was due to differences within food categories.

However, as Figure  1 (left side) depicts, consumption frequency differed greatly across food categories. Frequently consumed food categories encompassed vegetables which were consumed at 38% of all eating occasions ( n  = 400), followed by dairy products with 35% ( n  = 366), and sweets with 34% ( n  = 356). Conversely, rarely consumed food categories included meat substitutes, which were consumed in 2.2% of all eating occasions ( n  = 23), salty extras (1.5%, n  = 16), and pastries (1.3%, n  = 14).

Left side: Average experienced eating happiness (colour intensity: darker colours indicate greater happiness) and consumption frequency (size of the cycle) for the 14 food categories. Right side: Absolute share of the 14 food categories in total experienced eating happiness.

Amount of experienced eating happiness by food category

To account for the frequency of consumption, we calculated and scaled the absolute experienced eating happiness according to the total sum score. As shown in Figure  1 (right side), vegetables contributed the biggest share to the total happiness followed by sweets, dairy products, and bread. Clustering food categories shows that fruits and vegetables accounted for nearly one quarter of total eating happiness score and thus, contributed to a large part of eating related happiness. Grain products such as bread, pasta, and cereals, which are main sources of carbohydrates including starch and fibre, were the second main source for eating happiness. However, “unhealthy” snacks including sweets, salty extras, and pastries represented the third biggest source of eating related happiness.

Experienced eating happiness by meal type

To further elucidate the contribution of snacks to eating happiness, analysis on the meal type level was conducted. Experienced in-the-moment eating happiness significantly varied by meal type consumed, F (4, 1039) = 11.75, p  < 0.001. Frequencies of meal type consumption ranged from snacks being the most frequently logged meal type ( n  = 332; see also Table  1 ) to afternoon tea being the least logged meal type ( n  = 27). Figure  2 illustrates the wide dispersion within as well as between different meal types. Afternoon tea ( M  = 82.41, SD  = 15.26), dinner ( M  = 81.47, SD  = 14.73), and snacks ( M  = 79.45, SD  = 14.94) showed eating happiness values above the grand mean, whereas breakfast ( M  = 74.28, SD  = 16.35) and lunch ( M  = 73.09, SD  = 18.99) were below the eating happiness mean. Comparisons between meal types showed that eating happiness for snacks was significantly higher than for lunch t (533) = −4.44, p  = 0.001, d  = −0.38 and breakfast, t (567) = −3.78, p  = 0.001, d  = −0.33. However, this was also true for dinner, which induced greater eating happiness than lunch t (446) = −5.48, p  < 0.001, d  = −0.50 and breakfast, t (480) = −4.90, p  < 0.001, d  = −0.46. Finally, eating happiness for afternoon tea was greater than for lunch t (228) = −2.83, p  = 0.047, d  = −0.50. All other comparisons did not reach significance, t  ≤ 2.49, p  ≥ 0.093.

Experienced eating happiness per meal type. Small dots represent single eating events, big circles indicate average eating happiness, and the horizontal line indicates the grand mean. Boxes indicate the middle 50% (interquartile range) and median (darker/lighter shade). The whiskers above and below represent 1.5 of the interquartile range.

Control Analyses

In order to test for a potential confounding effect between experienced eating happiness, food categories, and meal type, additional control analyses within meal types were conducted. Comparing experienced eating happiness for dinner and lunch suggested that dinner did not trigger a happiness spill-over effect specific to vegetables since the foods consumed at dinner were generally associated with greater happiness than those consumed at other eating occasions (Supplementary Table  S1 ). Moreover, the relative frequency of vegetables consumed at dinner (73%, n  = 180 out of 245) and at lunch were comparable (69%, n  = 140 out of 203), indicating that the observed happiness-vegetables link does not seem to be mainly a meal type confounding effect.

Since the present study focuses on “food effects” (Level 1) rather than “person effects” (Level 2), we analysed the data at the food item level. However, participants who were generally overall happier with their eating could have inflated the observed happiness scores for certain food categories. In order to account for person-level effects, happiness scores were person-mean centred and thereby adjusted for mean level differences in happiness. The person-mean centred happiness scores ( M cwc ) represent the difference between the individual’s average happiness score (across all single in-the-moment happiness scores per food category) and the single happiness scores of the individual within the respective food category. The centred scores indicate whether the single in-the-moment happiness score was above (indicated by positive values) or below (indicated by negative values) the individual person-mean. As Table  1 depicts, the control analyses with centred values yielded highly similar results. Vegetables were again associated on average with more happiness than other food categories (although people might differ in their general eating happiness). An additional conducted ANOVA with person-centred happiness values as dependent variables and food categories as independent variables provided also a highly similar pattern of results. Replicating the previously reported analysis, eating happiness differed significantly across all 14 food categories, F (13, 2129) = 1.94, p  = 0.023, and post hoc analysis did not yield significant differences in experienced eating happiness between food categories, p  ≥ 0.14. Moreover, fruits and vegetables were associated with high happiness values, and “unhealthy” food choices such as sweets did not differ in experienced happiness from “healthy” food choices such as fruits or vegetables. The only difference between the previous and control analysis was that vegetables ( M cwc  = 1.16, SD  = 15.14) gained slightly in importance for eating-related happiness, whereas fruits ( M cwc  = −0.65, SD  = 13.21), salty extras ( M cwc  = −0.07, SD  = 8.01), and pastries ( M cwc  = −2.39, SD  = 18.26) became slightly less important.

This study is the first, to our knowledge, that investigated in-the-moment experienced eating happiness in real time and real life using EMA based self-report and imagery covering the complete diversity of food intake. The present results add to and extend previous findings by suggesting that fruit and vegetable consumption has immediate beneficial psychological effects. Overall, of 14 different main food categories, vegetables consumption contributed the largest share to eating happiness measured across eight days. Thus, in addition to the investment in future well-being indicated by previous research 8 , “healthy” food choices seem to be an investment in the in-the moment well-being.

Importantly, although many cultures convey the belief that eating certain foods has a greater hedonic and mood boosting effect, the present results suggest that this might not reflect actual in-the-moment experiences accurately. Even though people often have a spontaneous “unhealthy = tasty” intuition 13 , thus indicating that a stronger happiness boosting effect of “unhealthy” food is to be expected, the induced eating happiness of sweets did not differ on average from “healthy” food choices such as fruits or vegetables. This was also true for other stereotypically “unhealthy” foods such as pastries and salty extras, which did not show the expected greater boosting effect on happiness. Moreover, analyses on the meal type level support this notion, since snacks, despite their overall positive effect, were not the most psychologically beneficial meal type, i.e., dinner had a comparable “happiness” signature to snacking. Taken together, “healthy choices” seem to be also “happy choices” and at least comparable to or even higher in their hedonic value as compared to stereotypical “unhealthy” food choices.

In general, eating happiness was high, which concurs with previous research from field studies with generally healthy participants. De Castro, Bellisle, and Dalix 22 examined weekly food diaries from 54 French subjects and found that most of the meals were rated as appealing. Also, the observed differences in average eating happiness for the 14 different food categories, albeit statistically significant, were comparable small. One could argue that this simply indicates that participants avoided selecting bad food 22 . Alternatively, this might suggest that the type of food or food categories are less decisive for experienced eating happiness than often assumed. This relates to recent findings in the field of comfort and emotional eating. Many people believe that specific types of food have greater comforting value. Also in research, the foods eaten as response to negative emotional strain, are typically characterised as being high-caloric because such foods are assumed to provide immediate psycho-physical benefits 18 . However, comparing different food types did not provide evidence for the notion that they differed in their provided comfort; rather, eating in general led to significant improvements in mood 19 . This is mirrored in the present findings. Comparing the eating happiness of “healthy” food choices such as fruits and vegetables to that of “unhealthy” food choices such as sweets shows remarkably similar patterns as, on average, they were associated with high eating happiness and their range of experiences ranged from very negative to very positive.

This raises the question of why the idea that we can eat indulgent food to compensate for life’s mishaps is so prevailing. In an innovative experimental study, Adriaanse, Prinsen, de Witt Huberts, de Ridder, and Evers 23 led participants believe that they overate. Those who characterised themselves as emotional eaters falsely attributed their over-consumption to negative emotions, demonstrating a “confabulation”-effect. This indicates that people might have restricted self-knowledge and that recalled eating episodes suffer from systematic recall biases 24 . Moreover, Boelsma, Brink, Stafleu, and Hendriks 25 examined postprandial subjective wellness and objective parameters (e.g., ghrelin, insulin, glucose) after standardised breakfast intakes and did not find direct correlations. This suggests that the impact of different food categories on wellness might not be directly related to biological effects but rather due to conditioning as food is often paired with other positive experienced situations (e.g., social interactions) or to placebo effects 18 . Moreover, experimental and field studies indicate that not only negative, but also positive, emotions trigger eating 15 , 26 . One may speculate that selective attention might contribute to the “myth” of comfort food 19 in that people attend to the consumption effect of “comfort” food in negative situation but neglect the effect in positive ones.

The present data also show that eating behaviour in the real world is a complex behaviour with many different aspects. People make more than 200 food decisions a day 27 which poses a great challenge for the measurement of eating behaviour. Studies often assess specific food categories such as fruit and vegetable consumption using Food Frequency Questionnaires, which has clear advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness. However, focusing on selective aspects of eating and food choices might provide only a selective part of the picture 15 , 17 , 22 . It is important to note that focusing solely on the “unhealthy” food choices such as sweets would have led to the conclusion that they have a high “indulgent” value. To be able to draw conclusions about which foods make people happy, the relation of different food categories needs to be considered. The more comprehensive view, considering the whole dietary behaviour across eating occasions, reveals that “healthy” food choices actually contributed the biggest share to the total experienced eating happiness. Thus, for a more comprehensive understanding of how eating behaviours are regulated, more complete and sensitive measures of the behaviour are necessary. Developments in mobile technologies hold great promise for feasible dietary assessment based on image-assisted methods 28 .

As fruits and vegetables evoked high in-the-moment happiness experiences, one could speculate that these cumulate and have spill-over effects on subsequent general well-being, including life satisfaction across time. Combing in-the-moment measures with longitudinal perspectives might be a promising avenue for future studies for understanding the pathways from eating certain food types to subjective well-being. In the literature different pathways are discussed, including physiological and biochemical aspects of specific food elements or nutrients 7 .

The present EMA based data also revealed that eating happiness varied greatly within the 14 food categories and meal types. As within food category variance represented more than two third of the total observed variance, happiness varied according to nutritional characteristics and meal type; however, a myriad of factors present in the natural environment can affect each and every meal. Thus, widening the “nourishment” perspective by including how much, when, where, how long, and with whom people eat might tell us more about experienced eating happiness. Again, mobile, in-the-moment assessment opens the possibility of assessing the behavioural signature of eating in real life. Moreover, individual factors such as eating motives, habitual eating styles, convenience, and social norms are likely to contribute to eating happiness variance 5 , 29 .

A key strength of this study is that it was the first to examine experienced eating happiness in non-clinical participants using EMA technology and imagery to assess food intake. Despite this strength, there are some limitations to this study that affect the interpretation of the results. In the present study, eating happiness was examined on a food based level. This neglects differences on the individual level and might be examined in future multilevel studies. Furthermore, as a main aim of this study was to assess real life eating behaviour, the “natural” observation level is the meal, the psychological/ecological unit of eating 30 , rather than food categories or nutrients. Therefore, we cannot exclude that specific food categories may have had a comparably higher impact on the experienced happiness of the whole meal. Sample size and therefore Type I and Type II error rates are of concern. Although the total number of observations was higher than in previous studies (see for example, Boushey et al . 28 for a review), the number of participants was small but comparable to previous studies in this field 20 , 31 , 32 , 33 . Small sample sizes can increase error rates because the number of persons is more decisive than the number of nested observations 34 . Specially, nested data can seriously increase Type I error rates, which is rather unlikely to be the case in the present study. Concerning Type II error rates, Aarts et al . 35 illustrated for lower ICCs that adding extra observations per participant also increases power, particularly in the lower observation range. Considering the ICC and the number of observations per participant, one could argue that the power in the present study is likely to be sufficient to render the observed null-differences meaningful. Finally, the predominately white and well-educated sample does limit the degree to which the results can be generalised to the wider community; these results warrant replication with a more representative sample.

Despite these limitations, we think that our study has implications for both theory and practice. The cumulative evidence of psychological benefits from healthy food choices might offer new perspectives for health promotion and public-policy programs 8 . Making people aware of the “healthy = happy” association supported by empirical evidence provides a distinct and novel perspective to the prevailing “unhealthy = tasty” folk intuition and could foster eating choices that increase both in-the-moment happiness and future well-being. Furthermore, the present research lends support to the advocated paradigm shift from “food as health” to “food as well-being” which entails a supporting and encouraging rather constraining and limiting view on eating behaviour.

The study conformed with the Declaration of Helsinki. All study protocols were approved by University of Konstanz’s Institutional Review Board and were conducted in accordance with guidelines and regulations. Upon arrival, all participants signed a written informed consent.

Participants

Thirty-eight participants (28 females: average age = 24.47, SD  = 5.88, range = 18–48 years) from the University of Konstanz assessed their eating behaviour in close to real time and in their natural environment using an event-based ambulatory assessment method (EMA). No participant dropped out or had to be excluded. Thirty-three participants were students, with 52.6% studying psychology. As compensation, participants could choose between taking part in a lottery (4 × 25€) or receiving course credits (2 hours).

Participants were recruited through leaflets distributed at the university and postings on Facebook groups. Prior to participation, all participants gave written informed consent. Participants were invited to the laboratory for individual introductory sessions. During this first session, participants installed the application movisensXS (version 0.8.4203) on their own smartphones and downloaded the study survey (movisensXS Library v4065). In addition, they completed a short baseline questionnaire, including demographic variables like age, gender, education, and eating principles. Participants were instructed to log every eating occasion immediately before eating by using the smartphone to indicate the type of meal, take pictures of the food, and describe its main components using a free input field. Fluid intake was not assessed. Participants were asked to record their food intake on eight consecutive days. After finishing the study, participants were invited back to the laboratory for individual final interviews.

Immediately before eating participants were asked to indicate the type of meal with the following five options: breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, snack. In Germany, “afternoon tea” is called “Kaffee & Kuchen” which directly translates as “coffee & cake”. It is similar to the idea of a traditional “afternoon tea” meal in UK. Specifically, in Germany, people have “Kaffee & Kuchen” in the afternoon (between 4–5 pm) and typically coffee (or tea) is served with some cake or cookies. Dinner in Germany is a main meal with mainly savoury food.

After each meal, participants were asked to rate their meal on three dimensions. They rated (1) how much they enjoyed the meal, (2) how pleased they were with their meal, and (3) how tasty their meal was. Ratings were given on a scale of one to 100. For reliability analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha was calculated to assess the internal consistency of the three items. Overall Cronbach’s alpha was calculated with α = 0.87. In addition, the average of the 38 Cronbach’s alpha scores calculated at the person level also yielded a satisfactory value with α = 0.83 ( SD  = 0.24). Thirty-two of 38 participants showed a Cronbach’s alpha value above 0.70 (range = 0.42–0.97). An overall score of experienced happiness of eating was computed using the average of the three questions concerning the meals’ enjoyment, pleasure, and tastiness.

Analytical procedure

The food pictures and descriptions of their main components provided by the participants were subsequently coded by independent and trained raters. Following a standardised manual, additional components displayed in the picture were added to the description by the raters. All consumed foods were categorised into 14 different food categories (see Table  1 ) derived from the food classification system designed by the German Nutrition Society (DGE) and based on the existing food categories of the German Nutrient Database (Max Rubner Institut). Liquid intake and preparation method were not assessed. Therefore, fats and additional recipe ingredients were not included in further analyses, because they do not represent main elements of food intake. Further, salty extras were added to the categorisation.

No participant dropped out or had to be excluded due to high missing rates. Missing values were below 5% for all variables. The compliance rate at the meal level cannot be directly assessed since the numbers of meals and snacks can vary between as well as within persons (between days). As a rough compliance estimate, the numbers of meals that are expected from a “normative” perspective during the eight observation days can be used as a comparison standard (8 x breakfast, 8 × lunch, 8 × dinner = 24 meals). On average, the participants reported M  = 6.3 breakfasts ( SD  = 2.3), M  = 5.3 lunches ( SD  = 1.8), and M  = 6.5 dinners ( SD  = 2.0). In comparison to the “normative” expected 24 meals, these numbers indicate a good compliance (approx. 75%) with a tendency to miss six meals during the study period (approx. 25%). However, the “normative” expected 24 meals for the study period might be too high since participants might also have skipped meals (e.g. breakfast). Also, the present compliance rates are comparable to other studies. For example, Elliston et al . 36 recorded 3.3 meal/snack reports per day in an Australian adult sample and Casperson et al . 37 recorded 2.2 meal reports per day in a sample of adolescents. In the present study, on average, M  = 3.4 ( SD  = 1.35) meals or snacks were reported per day. These data indicate overall a satisfactory compliance rate and did not indicate selective reporting of certain food items.

To graphically visualise data, Tableau (version 10.1) was used and for further statistical analyses, IBM SPSS Statistics (version 24 for Windows).

Data availability

The dataset generated and analysed during the current study is available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

Cornil, Y. & Chandon, P. Pleasure as an ally of healthy eating? Contrasting visceral and epicurean eating pleasure and their association with portion size preferences and wellbeing. Appetite 104 , 52–59 (2016).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Mann, T. et al . Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer. American Psychologist 62 , 220–233 (2007).

van Strien, T., Herman, C. P. & Verheijden, M. W. Dietary restraint and body mass change. A 3-year follow up study in a representative Dutch sample. Appetite 76 , 44–49 (2014).

Block, L. G. et al . From nutrients to nurturance: A conceptual introduction to food well-being. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 30 , 5–13 (2011).

Article   Google Scholar  

Renner, B., Sproesser, G., Strohbach, S. & Schupp, H. T. Why we eat what we eat. The eating motivation survey (TEMS). Appetite 59 , 117–128 (2012).

Conner, T. S., Brookie, K. L., Carr, A. C., Mainvil, L. A. & Vissers, M. C. Let them eat fruit! The effect of fruit and vegetable consumption on psychological well-being in young adults: A randomized controlled trial. PloS one 12 , e0171206 (2017).

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Rooney, C., McKinley, M. C. & Woodside, J. V. The potential role of fruit and vegetables in aspects of psychological well-being: a review of the literature and future directions. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 72 , 420–432 (2013).

Mujcic, R. & Oswald, A. J. Evolution of well-being and happiness after increases in consumption of fruit and vegetables. American Journal of Public Health 106 , 1504–1510 (2016).

White, B. A., Horwath, C. C. & Conner, T. S. Many apples a day keep the blues away – Daily experiences of negative and positive affect and food consumption in young adults. British Journal of Health Psychology 18 , 782–798 (2013).

Blanchflower, D. G., Oswald, A. J. & Stewart-Brown, S. Is psychological well-being linked to the consumption of fruit and vegetables? Social Indicators Research 114 , 785–801 (2013).

Grant, N., Wardle, J. & Steptoe, A. The relationship between life satisfaction and health behavior: A Cross-cultural analysis of young adults. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine 16 , 259–268 (2009).

Conner, T. S., Brookie, K. L., Richardson, A. C. & Polak, M. A. On carrots and curiosity: Eating fruit and vegetables is associated with greater flourishing in daily life. British Journal of Health Psychology 20 , 413–427 (2015).

Raghunathan, R., Naylor, R. W. & Hoyer, W. D. The unhealthy = tasty intuition and its effects on taste inferences, enjoyment, and choice of food products. Journal of Marketing 70 , 170–184 (2006).

Evers, C., Stok, F. M. & de Ridder, D. T. Feeding your feelings: Emotion regulation strategies and emotional eating. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36 , 792–804 (2010).

Sproesser, G., Schupp, H. T. & Renner, B. The bright side of stress-induced eating: eating more when stressed but less when pleased. Psychological Science 25 , 58–65 (2013).

Wansink, B., Cheney, M. M. & Chan, N. Exploring comfort food preferences across age and gender. Physiology & Behavior 79 , 739–747 (2003).

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Taut, D., Renner, B. & Baban, A. Reappraise the situation but express your emotions: impact of emotion regulation strategies on ad libitum food intake. Frontiers in Psychology 3 , 359 (2012).

Tomiyama, J. A., Finch, L. E. & Cummings, J. R. Did that brownie do its job? Stress, eating, and the biobehavioral effects of comfort food. Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: An Interdisciplinary, Searchable, and Linkable Resource (2015).

Wagner, H. S., Ahlstrom, B., Redden, J. P., Vickers, Z. & Mann, T. The myth of comfort food. Health Psychology 33 , 1552–1557 (2014).

Schüz, B., Bower, J. & Ferguson, S. G. Stimulus control and affect in dietary behaviours. An intensive longitudinal study. Appetite 87 , 310–317 (2015).

Shiffman, S. Conceptualizing analyses of ecological momentary assessment data. Nicotine & Tobacco Research 16 , S76–S87 (2014).

de Castro, J. M., Bellisle, F. & Dalix, A.-M. Palatability and intake relationships in free-living humans: measurement and characterization in the French. Physiology & Behavior 68 , 271–277 (2000).

Adriaanse, M. A., Prinsen, S., de Witt Huberts, J. C., de Ridder, D. T. & Evers, C. ‘I ate too much so I must have been sad’: Emotions as a confabulated reason for overeating. Appetite 103 , 318–323 (2016).

Robinson, E. Relationships between expected, online and remembered enjoyment for food products. Appetite 74 , 55–60 (2014).

Boelsma, E., Brink, E. J., Stafleu, A. & Hendriks, H. F. Measures of postprandial wellness after single intake of two protein–carbohydrate meals. Appetite 54 , 456–464 (2010).

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Boh, B. et al . Indulgent thinking? Ecological momentary assessment of overweight and healthy-weight participants’ cognitions and emotions. Behaviour Research and Therapy 87 , 196–206 (2016).

Wansink, B. & Sobal, J. Mindless eating: The 200 daily food decisions we overlook. Environment and Behavior 39 , 106–123 (2007).

Boushey, C., Spoden, M., Zhu, F., Delp, E. & Kerr, D. New mobile methods for dietary assessment: review of image-assisted and image-based dietary assessment methods. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society , 1–12 (2016).

Stok, F. M. et al . The DONE framework: Creation, evaluation, and updating of an interdisciplinary, dynamic framework 2.0 of determinants of nutrition and eating. PLoS ONE 12 , e0171077 (2017).

Pliner, P. & Rozin, P. In Dimensions of the meal: The science, culture, business, and art of eating (ed H Meiselman) 19–46 (Aspen Publishers, 2000).

Inauen, J., Shrout, P. E., Bolger, N., Stadler, G. & Scholz, U. Mind the gap? Anintensive longitudinal study of between-person and within-person intention-behaviorrelations. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 50 , 516–522 (2016).

Zepeda, L. & Deal, D. Think before you eat: photographic food diaries asintervention tools to change dietary decision making and attitudes. InternationalJournal of Consumer Studies 32 , 692–698 (2008).

Stein, K. F. & Corte, C. M. Ecologic momentary assessment of eating‐disordered behaviors. International Journal of Eating Disorders 34 , 349–360 (2003).

Bolger, N., Stadler, G. & Laurenceau, J. P. Power analysis for intensive longitudinal studies in Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (ed . Mehl, M. R. & Conner, T. S.) 285–301 (New York: The Guilford Press, 2012).

Aarts, E., Verhage, M., Veenvliet, J. V., Dolan, C. V. & Van Der Sluis, S. A solutionto dependency: using multilevel analysis to accommodate nested data. Natureneuroscience 17 , 491–496 (2014).

Elliston, K. G., Ferguson, S. G., Schüz, N. & Schüz, B. Situational cues andmomentary food environment predict everyday eating behavior in adults withoverweight and obesity. Health Psychology 36 , 337–345 (2017).

Casperson, S. L. et al . A mobile phone food record app to digitally capture dietary intake for adolescents in afree-living environment: usability study. JMIR mHealth and uHealth 3 , e30 (2015).

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the project SmartAct (Grant 01EL1420A, granted to B.R. & H.S.). The funding source had no involvement in the study’s design; the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; the writing of the report; or the decision to submit this article for publication. We thank Gudrun Sproesser, Helge Giese, and Angela Whale for their valuable support.

Author information

Deborah R. Wahl and Karoline Villinger contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

Deborah R. Wahl, Karoline Villinger, Laura M. König, Katrin Ziesemer, Harald T. Schupp & Britta Renner

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

B.R. & H.S. developed the study concept. All authors participated in the generation of the study design. D.W., K.V., L.K. & K.Z. conducted the study, including participant recruitment and data collection, under the supervision of B.R. & H.S.; D.W. & K.V. conducted data analyses. D.W. & K.V. prepared the first manuscript draft, and B.R. & H.S. provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Deborah R. Wahl or Britta Renner .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary table s1, rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Wahl, D.R., Villinger, K., König, L.M. et al. Healthy food choices are happy food choices: Evidence from a real life sample using smartphone based assessments. Sci Rep 7 , 17069 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17262-9

Download citation

Received : 05 June 2017

Accepted : 23 November 2017

Published : 06 December 2017

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17262-9

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Financial satisfaction, food security, and shared meals are foundations of happiness among older persons in thailand.

• Sirinya Phulkerd
• Rossarin Soottipong Gray
• Sasinee Thapsuwan

BMC Geriatrics (2023)

Enrichment and Conflict Between Work and Health Behaviors: New Scales for Assessing How Work Relates to Physical Exercise and Healthy Eating

• Sabine Sonnentag
• Maria U. Kottwitz
• Jette Völker

Occupational Health Science (2023)

The value of Bayesian predictive projection for variable selection: an example of selecting lifestyle predictors of young adult well-being

• A. Bartonicek
• S. R. Wickham
• T. S. Conner

BMC Public Health (2021)

Smartphone-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment of Well-Being: A Systematic Review and Recommendations for Future Studies

• Lianne P. de Vries
• Bart M. L. Baselmans
• Meike Bartels

Journal of Happiness Studies (2021)

Exploration of nutritional, antioxidative, antibacterial and anticancer status of Russula alatoreticula: towards valorization of a traditionally preferred unique myco-food

• Somanjana Khatua
• Surashree Sen Gupta
• Krishnendu Acharya

Journal of Food Science and Technology (2021)

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines . If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

• Reference Manager
• Simple TEXT file

People also looked at

Original research article, students' knowledge of healthy food and their actual eating habits: a case study on the university of granada (spain).

• Department of Sociology, Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

This article focuses on an analysis of the discourses produced during 34 semi-structured interviews (17 men and 17 women) conducted at the University of Granada (Spain) with undergraduate, Master, and Ph.D. students. The interviewees were between 20 and 44 years old. It was observed that the fact of having a high educational level did not prevent University students from eating unhealthily. There is a gap between the fact that 97.1% of 34 students interviewed (that is, 33 of them) know what healthy food is and their self-perception about whether or not what they are eating is healthy, since in 41.2% of them said self-perception is negative. This gap narrows as the interviewees' age increases and their socio-economic and vital situation is stabilizing which favors that their eating habits become more regular and healthier. Thus, all the interviewees aged 27 or over self-perceived that they were eating healthily. But the biggest differences are those that have to do with the gender of interviewees. Thus, while 23.5% of women interviewed perceived that they were not eating healthy, 76.5% of them felt that they were eating healthy. However, among the men interviewed, these percentages were somehow reversed, in such a way that 58.8% of them believed that they were not eating healthy, compared to 41.2% of them who indicated that they were eating healthy. Therefore, the investigation revealed that women tend to have the best chances of assuming healthy eating habits. Male students living outside the family home or without female partners exhibited greater feeding problems, while females living under similar conditions tended to display healthier eating habits. This is related to the fact that women have traditionally been in charge of acquiring and preparing food. So, women's food education has not been restricted to the mere transmission to them of knowledge about what healthy food is, but from their childhood they were food trained through their active involvement in practical experiences. Obviously, the solution proposed to this male disadvantage is to not perpetuate macho gender stereotypes that assign women the role of home caregivers, but to seek that both women and men have the opportunity and the duty to experience equally those practical experiences that involve the tasks of the acquisition and preparation of food. Working to achieve a situation like this, not only promotes progress in gender equality, but also helps to overcome the lower training of men to perform the tasks inherent in their diet.

Introduction

Beyond being an action, whose only purpose is to satisfy one of the most primitive needs of human beings, feeding should be understood as a social practice that is socially constructed and/or reconstructed over time ( Berger and Luckmann, 1979 ; Verplanken and Faes, 1999 ; García-Cardona et al., 2008 ). The family home is the first environment of socialization and personality formation ( Isaza, 2012 ). Thus, the family home constitutes the primary social space in which individuals' practices, customs, gender identity/roles and social habits begin to develop; particularly, individuals' eating habits. Such habits are understood here as the set of feeding-related social customs that influence the way people prepare, consume, or even select food. Therefore, preparing and consuming food are cultural behaviors that provide individuals with an identity ( Fischler, 1980 ; FAO, 2008 ; Barilla Center for Food Nutrition, 2009 ; Almerico, 2014 ; Cox, 2014 ; Silva et al., 2014 ; The Nielsen Company, 2015 ; Levine et al., 2016 ). The food people consume and how the food is consumed are essential determinants of health. Regarding this matter, here we mention only a few references from an abundant bibliography ( Willett et al., 1995 ; Martín Criado, 2004 ; Díaz-Méndez and Gómez-Benito, 2008 ; Gracia-Arnáiz, 2010 ; Guenther et al., 2013 ; Martinez-Lacoba et al., 2018 ).

Growing concerns about eating healthy foods have emerged as the consumption of industrially produced foods has augmented, and the negative consequences of industrially produced foods are increasingly acknowledged. Obesity is among the most widespread consequences. For instance, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD, 2017a ), obesity has rapidly increased in OECD countries from 2010 and not only among adults, since children constitute 24.6% of the overweight population. Additionally, the OECD (2017a) reported that 19.5% of the population in Europe was overweight or obese in 2015, and this percentage exceeded that in other countries, such as Korea and Japan (6%), but was less than that in New Zealand, Mexico, and the United States (30%). Therefore, unsurprisingly, ischemic heart disease (10.6% in women and 12.8% in men) and heart attacks (8.2% in women and 7% in men) are currently among the main causes of death in Europe.

In the Spanish context, people are attempting to acquire better eating habits, as indicated by the Organization of Consumers and Users ( OCU, 2017 ). According to data from an OCU interview, the respondents reduced their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages by 56%, pastries and sweets by 47%, and alcohol by 38%, while the consumption of fruits has increased by 30% and vegetables by 31%. Among all explanations given by the interviewees about these changes, their concern regarding their health was the most frequent, which is in line with the growing awareness that food plays a key role in people's health ( Cubero-Juánez et al., 2017 ; De Ridder et al., 2017 ; Dernini et al., 2017 ; Grosso et al., 2017 ; Oliffe et al., 2017 ; WHO, 2018 ). However, despite efforts to improve their eating habits, Spanish people have not yet managed to consume the healthiest possible diets ( OCU, 2019 ).

According to the National Institute of Statistics ( INE ), in 2019 , 18.7% of Spaniards aged 16 years and over reported that their health was “very good,” while 56.6% of the respondents described their health as “good.” Only 5.6% of the population considered their health “bad,” and 1.5% of the population considered their heath “very bad.” Regarding the healthiness of food, a report by OCU (2017) pointed out that 6% of Spaniards consumed more sweets and sweetened beverages, 7% of Spaniards consumed less fruit, and 5% of Spaniards consumed fewer vegetables than 2 years before. Among the reasons given in the report, the Spaniards indicated that they did not changed their bad eating habits due to the lack of time or will. However, Spaniards are not the only individuals who show the consequences of adopting unhealthy eating habits. Thus, regarding the percentage of individuals who are obese or overweight due to inadequate nutrition, some European Union countries are even above the Spanish average (16.7%), such as the United Kingdom (26.9%), Germany (23.6%), and Luxembourg (22.6%) ( OECD, 2017b ).

In these circumstances, as this article shows, even the fact of having a high level of studies, does not guarantee the strengthening of good and healthy eating practices among the University students interviewed ( Entrena-Durán et al., 2020 ). Thus, as revealed by the research “Effects of Age and Gender Identity on the Healthiness of University Students' Eating Habits in Spain” on which the writing of this article has been based, all the interviewees know what constitutes healthy food because of their elevated educational level. However, this knowledge does not always lead them to eat healthy. Achieving a healthy diet also requires the internalization and implementation of daily healthy eating habits. For that reason, the subsequent analysis focuses on the role that age and gender identity play in facilitating or hindering the acquisition of such habits to young men and women interviewed for this study.

Materials and Methods

This research study analyzed the eating habits reported in the interviews with a group of students at Granada University (Spain). In this regard, we clarify here that we have focused our research on University students because this social group is very appropriate to study how life crises (these usually appear as a consequence of the change processes in which people are involved) affect to eating patterns and habits. Thus, when young students enter the University, they usually undergo a deep change and an important life crisis, since many of them have to leave their home and move away from their families. As a consequence, these students experience the loss of the relatively stable living environment where they have resided until then, in which their diet, analogous to the generality of their life, has usually been regulated by their parents; mainly by their mothers, who have been responsible for the tasks of acquisition and preparation of food for the family.

All these sudden changes explain that a series of eating problems, such as the irregularity in meal times, the excessive consumption of fast food, the follow-up of nutritionally inadequate diets or the high incidence of eating disorders, are frequent among the University population ( Ruiz-Moreno et al., 2013 ).

A qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews, was carried out in order to understand the knowledge the subjects analyzed have about the motivations behind the aforementioned eating problems. The qualitative methodology of our research has allowed us to comprehend, through the analysis of discourses produced by the students interviewed, how these students experience and explain their eating disorders.

We selected our sample among students of the University of Granada, but this should not be understood in the sense that we have limited ourselves to doing research with local students. In fact, this limitation has not occurred because the University of Granada has an outstanding national and international position. Thus, the 2020 edition of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, has placed the University of Granada among the 300 best Universities in the world. In this Ranking, as has been happening in the last 5 years, the UGR appears in positions 201–300, where the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Valencia are also located. This circumstance, together with the fact that the University of Granada has a long tradition of international academic cooperation, explains that many students come to Granada from all over Spain, as well as from very different countries abroad; mainly, from the European Union (EU). Particularly, with regard to the EU, the University of Granada is the Spanish University that accepts more foreign students within the framework of the Erasmus Program. So, as can be seen in Table 1 , in the selected sample for this study only 14 students are from the municipality of Granada or its province, while the remaining 20 students interviewed came from other Spanish provinces or even from abroad. In other words, 41.2% of those interviewees are from Granada or its province and 58.8% of them came from other parts of Spain, and even some of these students are from foreign countries.

Table 1 . List of interviewees.

The selected sample contained a group of 14 undergraduate, 18 Master, and 2 Ph.D. students which were chosen using a non-probability purposive sampling method. Therefore, we interviewed 34 students (17 women and 17 men) who were between the ages of 20 and 44. The leading reason for deciding to conclude the fieldwork with 34 interviews was because we saw no additional information was obtained from the new interviews done.

The 34 students interviewed were not told that we were going to investigate the influence of their age and gender identity on the healthiness of their eating habits. They were only told that our interviews were intended to both know their self-perception about their own eating behaviors and their opinions regarding the healthiness of eating habits in Spain.

The interviews lasted between 45 and 60 min, depending on the respondents' motivation in answering the questions. Most participants in this study were highly receptive and communicative. All interviews were recorded with the prior consent of the interviewees.

After all interviews were done, we analyzed all collected information. First, we focused on assessing whether the interviewees were aware of the need to adopt healthy eating habits and how to identify healthy food. Once we verified that 97.1% of 34 interviewees (that is, 33 of them) were aware of these feeding issues (mainly due to their educational level), we investigated the reasons why this awareness or conscience did not motivate many of them to change their eating habits to healthier ones, so that, there is a gap between what the interviewees thought they knew and their real eating behaviors.

As just said, there is a gap between the fact that 33 of 34 students interviewed (that is, 97.1% of them) know what healthy food is and their self-perception about whether or not what they are eating is healthy (see Table 1 ). So, in 14 of them said self-perception is negative; that is in 41.2% of the selected sample. This gap narrows as the interviewees' age increases and their socio-economic and vital situation is stabilizing, which favors that their eating habits become more regular and healthier. Thus, all the interviewees aged 27 or over self-perceived that they were eating healthily. But the biggest differences are those that have to do with the gender of interviewees.

Likewise, Table 1 shows how only 4 of the 17 women interviewed perceive that they do not eat healthy, while 13 of them perceive that they eat healthy. As for men, there are 10 who perceive that they do not eat healthy and 7 who think that they eat healthy. But, it should be noted the fact that four of these men live with their parents, two with their female romantic partners and only one lives alone, but he is 42 years old and, therefore, he is more aware of the need to eat healthy. In other words, there are important differences according to gender in the perceptions of the interviewees about the healthiness of their diet. Thus, while 23.5% of women interviewed perceived that they were not eating healthy, 76.5% of them felt that they were eating healthy. However, among the men interviewed, these percentages were somehow reversed, in such a way that 58.8% of them believed that they were not eating healthy, compared to 41.2% of them who affirmed that they were eating healthy.

Moreover, one significant thing we note in this research is that, due to their high educational level, the generality of interviewees, regardless of their gender, show an absolute distrust of advertisements. Therefore, all University students analyzed seemed to be aware of the “tricks” used by advertising to cajole and attract consumers toward their products regardless of whether such products are healthy. Both women and men revealed some distrust of food ads.

“Often, the labeling of products is pure marketing, selling methods that companies have to create new demands for consumers. For instance, people want to be healthier, and the response of companies is offering milk with added calcium or omega 3, which was not initially demanded by the people. All our lives, we have taken untreated milk that was healthy, but now, they are selling us Premium milk, which is milk with new additives. So, a demand that you did not have before is now being produced” (Man, 37 years old).

However, surprisingly, only 7 of 34 interviewed students (that is, 20.6% of them) openly stated that they usually read the labels of the foods they consume. Only two of these seven students were men, but they were especially motivated to verify these labels since they were both vegans.

“I look at the labels of products, their images, their presentation. I try not to buy many packaged products because they put many images of trees and/or fruits. and so, they try to deceive us. However, sometimes, I have bought these kinds of products, and when I think about it later, I say to myself ‘I've let myself be cajoled’, but anyway. I think so many products are being sold to us in this way now” (Man, 22 years old).

The importance of regulating food advertising was also noted by the interviewees with an emphasis on advertising targeting children.

“It is necessary to intensify and improve the regulations of industrial food advertising (industrial bakery, sugary soft drinks and so on) above all in children's programs since children are very vulnerable. Although, often, children are not the ones who buy the food they see in the ads of the supermarket, but their parents buy it.” (Man, 42 years old).

As shown in Table 1 , the aforementioned fact that 97.1% of 34 interviewed (that is, 33 of them) clearly distinguished between healthy and unhealthy food does not mean that 97.1% of students eat healthily. So, 32 interviewees (namely, 94.1% of them) confessed that they allowed themselves one or another “whim” in their everyday lives. For instance, the respondents consumed precooked foods, such as pizza and lasagna, and industrially manufactured sweets and ice cream. Furthermore, while 22 interviewees (namely, 64.7% of interviewees) said that they had some concern about their diet, the fact is that only 15 students (44.1% of them) expressed a settled intention to get a healthy diet. Most of these students were women, although the case of some men is also significant, such as this 27-year-old man, for whom a healthy diet is the one that is as varied as possible.

“I am quite influenced by my grandmother's meals; so, what I usually prepare to eat is traditional meals, such as lentil soups or stews… I do not usually repeat the meal in the same week; so, what I understand for a healthy diet is to eat as much variety as possible” (Man, 27 years old).

In particular, 14 students (41.2% of the sample), of which 8 were women, said they were selective regarding the foods they consumed, and they attempted to review the labels and composition of each product. Nevertheless, most interviewees (58.8% of them) said that they do not usually review the labels of products because they do not understand them, or they lack the time. Moreover, when they review the labels, they are rushed and only superficially read them.

“I don't pay attention to labels basically because I cannot understand them. There are all ingredients, but when you start reading something called ‘E’ and this kind of things… I cannot understand them” (Man, 27 years old).

“Sometimes when I buy frozen foods, I see the labels… When the freezing process began, the expiration date, if it has saturated fats. but the truth is that it is not something that I usually do” (Woman, 24 years old).

“The truth is that I do not look at the label in detail. I do not look at all the components that the product has” (Woman, 33 years old).

Additionally, as shown in Table 1 , we try to find out if the place where the interviewees lived significantly influenced their eating habits. In this sense, the analysis of 34 conducted interviews revealed that 8 University students (23.5% of them) were still living with their parents (3 women and 5 men), 18 University students (52.9% of them) shared housing with other students (9 women and 9 men), 6 University students (17.6% of them) lived with their romantic partners (4 women and 2 men), and only 2 University students (5.9% of them) lived single (1 woman and 1 man). In this regard, those 8 students who still lived with their families were the ones who ate more healthily, mainly because, in this case, their mothers were the ones who acquired and cooked the food.

The Decisive Influence of Age and Gender

However, what decisively influenced the interviewees' eating behaviors was their age and gender. Firstly, we observed that the concern in buying healthy foods grew as the age of the interviewees increased. Particularly, students aged 27 years or older (that is, 35.3% of the interviewees) showed great interest in maintaining the type of diet that they thought was most beneficial to their health.

“I do not drink milk anymore. Some people have told us that it is not recommendable to drink so much milk at a certain age. My partner has high cholesterol, and we had to change our diet …I think that is also due to the fact that we are getting older… hahaha … We try to do some exercise as well” (Woman, 44 years old).

Those University students who showed a lower degree of involvement in the tasks of buying and cooking food were aged between 20 and 26 years; namely, 64.7% of the selected sample. These students, who are the youngest of this sample, are highly dependent on their parents for performing tasks, especially their mothers. Thus, these often continue providing containers with frozen food they had prepared to their sons even after they have left the family home. Focusing on the gender variable, we observed that the said dependency is lower among women, and only three of nine women students sharing housing with other students (33.3% of them) admitted that they received meals prepared by their mothers, even though they no longer resided under the same roof. However, only one of nine male students in the aforementioned residential situation (11.1% of them) said that he prepares his own food without any help, while most young male interviewees showed that they were strongly dependent not only on their mothers but also on other women (romantic partners or female companions with which they shared housing) in terms of buying and/or cooking food. In other words, 88.9% of these students used to ignore these tasks and leave them in female hands.

“I have been living out of my parents' home for 3 years. My first year was a bit disastrous in terms of my feeding… I lost 10 kg because I only ate some pasta and rice… it was definitely a critical point in my feeding. Fortunately, my nourishment improved when I started living with a woman flatmate, but, when she left the floor, I lost weight again. Now, I'm trying to improve my diet a bit” (Man, 20 years old).

Unfortunately, this situation does not change significantly as the interviewees age. Those male students aged over 27 years who reside with their romantic partners continue to show a strong dependence on women for activities, such as purchasing food and cooking.

“When I eat alone, I do not have control over the food that I eat. When I lived with my parents, they used to manage everything about feeding, and my partner currently helps me. I thought that it is because of this kind of life in which we need to do lots of things and all them so quickly that we do not have time enough to eat” (Man, 33 years old).

Justifications to Explain Eating Habits

One of justifications used by some students to explain why they are not eating healthily is the lack of time in their daily lives. So, 7 of the 34 interviewees (20.6% of selected sample) said that they did not have enough time to eat a healthy diet. Two of these students were women and the remaining five were men. Besides, 14 students said that they had time to prepare all their meals; that is, 41.2% of the selected sample. Ten of these 14 students (namely, 71.4% of them) were women and the remaining four were men, including the two aforementioned men who were vegans; thus, they were strongly motivated to devote enough daily time to prepare their food.

“The great majority of my friends eat really unhealthy; they do not do exercise, and they eat a lot of fried food. I think that it is because they are lazy or maybe because of the stress of working all day, and they directly think, ‘Well, for just one day in which I can allow a whim, I'm going to eat a soup? Not at all” (Man, 25 years old).

Nevertheless, the remaining 13 students (38.2% of the selected sample) openly stated that they had no time problems related to feeding, either because they were living with their parents or because they often received frozen food cooked by their mothers. In particular, with reference to these 13 students (5 women and 8 men) it should be noted that, in addition to the key role played by mothers, men mentioned that their female partners are mainly responsible for preparing and cooking food. Therefore, these female partners could be perpetuating the same role in some way that they see their mothers perform, i.e., the main individual responsible for feeding the family. In fact, these mothers assume and internalize the function that “male domination” ( Bourdieu, 2001 ) has assigned to them so intensely that they often do not allow their daughters to work in the kitchen while they are inside it.

“When I live with my mother, I do not make my own meal, but when I live alone, I do everything by myself. This is not because I do not want to do it, but it is because my mother prefers doing all household tasks without any sort of help. She told me, ‘no, no, get out of the kitchen!’; so… how can I learn?” (Woman, 21 years old).

Furthermore, 26.5% of interviewees (5 men and 4 women) mentioned direct and conscious social pressure as an influential factor on their eating habits.

“Maybe, if you go out with your friends on weekends, you are more exposed to eat some inappropriate food, such as burgers or some fried food… And, in case you prefer another healthier meal, they automatically look at you as weird or something like this…” (Man, 25 years old).

“I do not usually eat snacks. I eat them when I meet with some friends” (Man, 22 years old).

In addition to friends, social pressure may also come from some relatives, romantic partners, or even flatmates. In all these cases, the way social pressure is exercised varies according to the age of those who experience it. Primarily, age determines the settings where such pressure is exerted. In this regard, although students older than 30 years refer to such settings as “small meetings with friends,” younger students talk about getting together in an apartment to play video games or going to bars to “take tapas.”

“I usually buy snacks, but it is because my husband and my little son like them. I do not like snacks; so, I do not eat them. I mostly prefer doing varied meals for them, such as fruits or vegetables… This is what I understand for healthy diet” (Woman, 33 years old).

“I usually eat some snacks just when I meet with some friends to watch a football match or dinner. but I do not consume them on my own. With these products, it happens to me, I think, what happens to us all. this feeling of saying ‘take them away from me because otherwise I cannot stop eating them!’ It is true; they are good. I suppose that is because of the additives or aromas they have.” (Man, 37 years old).

Last but not least, the price of the products was another of the interviewees' arguments to justify their unhealthy eating habits. Thus, most students agreed that the healthiness of a food product is lower when the price is cheaper. Consistently, 19 of the 34 interviewees (55.9% of the selected sample) explicitly said that they had more or less difficulties (depending on their respective living standards) to eat healthy due to the high prices of organic or natural products compared to the prices of industrially processed foods, which they perceived as less healthy. Nine of these 19 students were men aged between 20 and 28 years, while the other 10 students were women aged between 21 and 27 years.

“When I was a degree student, I ate lots of pre-cooked food because I preferred to save my money for other things, such as going out with friends, for example” (Man, 26 years old).

However, the importance of price decreases as the University students become economically independent from their parents and their age and purchasing power increase. This change is particularly observed among those female students who are 27 years old or older.

“I usually buy organic/local food products, such as vegetables or meat, in local markets or corner shops… I do not usually take into account their price, but what drives me to purchase these products is that they inspire more confidence in me than those from great supermarkets because you meet the owner, and you can know everything about the product just by asking him/her” (Woman, 44 years old).

Particularly, the students most interested in eating a healthy diet are also those who are the most concerned about buying food products whose healthiness they trust. But, even in this case, price continues to have much influence on deciding what to buy or what can be bought. Some students suggested the need to implement policies to solve this problem.

“I think that we should encourage more local products. that is, that people consume more of this type of product than foreign ones. Perhaps governments should encourage more consumption of local foods by subsidizing them or establishing certain norms for the market” (Woman, 27 years old).

The authors of this work are fully aware that the discussion on the factors that influence eating habits and affect their greater or lesser healthiness does not end with age, gender and other factors that we have considered in this research. In this regard, numerous studies have demonstrated that the educational status, the income level, the role of agri-food supply chains and the lesser or greater accessibility to these by people, the occupation and even social class are factors that can influence people's feeding habits ( De Irala-Estévez et al., 2000 ; Trichopoulou et al., 2002 ; Darmon and Drewnowski, 2008 ; Cobb-Clark et al., 2012 ; Horská et al., 2020 ). However, these factors are not the only ones that determine individuals' eating habits, since other external or environmental factors alter these habits and are beyond an individual's control. Examples of these factors include the characteristic cultures of the social and/or geographical context in which a person lives or has grown and food advertising ( Troncoso and Amaya, 2009 ; Saucedo et al., 2010 ; Ganasegeran et al., 2012 ; Robinson et al., 2013 ; Becerra et al., 2015 ; WHO, 2018 ; Higgs and Ruddock, 2020 ).

Currently, concerns about people's health since childhood and throughout their entire adulthood are increasing. Demands for natural and healthy foods by consumers are growing ( De Ridder et al., 2017 ; Dernini et al., 2017 ; Oliffe et al., 2017 ; Parham et al., 2017 ; Vallejo-Alviter and Martínez-Moctezuma, 2017 ). In this context, in which daily lives of people take place, the said demands are often manipulated by marketing strategies used by the food industry. Thus, a series of foods that are actually industrial products are presented as natural and/or ecological and, therefore, good for health, which has become an advertising hook for this type of processed foods.

Usually, advertising, rather than reliably reporting the quality and characteristics of the products offered or promoting a healthy diet, reflects marketing strategies that create symbolic necessities in a consumption society. Now, in this society, individuals seek to face new experiences and feelings or simply publicly show their identities by purchasing certain material goods ( Ibáñez, 1997 ). Thus, unsurprisingly, the WHO (2014 , 2018 , 2020) openly criticized current advertising campaigns for promoting food products without being entirely honest with consumers, and subsequently, the WHO noted the urgency of persuading governmental institutions to take action to address this issue.

Regarding the control of food advertising in Spain, the Spanish Ministry of Health (SPH) published the so-called PAOS code in 2005 (Advertising (Publicidad), Activity (Actividad), Obesity (Obesidad), and Health (Salud) [PAOS]) ( SPH, 2005 ; AECOSAN, 2012 ). In collaboration with a group of companies voluntarily committed to the cause, the Ministry intended to co-regulate the food and drink products advertised to children to prevent obesity and promote health among them ( González-Díaz, 2013 ). Nonetheless, despite all the ethical rules established in this code for the development, creation and dissemination of advertising messages to children, there exists still a high degree of non-compliance with the PAOS code, at least regarding television commercials. Thus, as shown in a recent article ( León-Flández et al., 2017 ), up to 88.3% of television advertisements for foods and beverages targeting minors violated the code in some way in 2012, while in 2008, the degree of noncompliance was 49.3%. Notably, non-compliance was greater in the commercials aired on children's channels (92.3%) than in commercials airing on channels targeting the entire population (81.5%). In this context, the aforementioned article proposed more restrictive and legal measures for food advertising to children, with healthy products being the only suitable products that can be advertised to minors.

Nonetheless, the problems caused by unhealthy feeding practices cannot be solved only by the enactment of prohibitive or restrictive new laws or measures that are often not complied with. Furthermore, this issue cannot only be resolved by doctors and nutritionists prescribing highly strict diets that are demoralizing to those who are unable to follow them ( Pérez-Rodrigo and Aranceta, 2001 ; Worsley, 2002 ; Bandura, 2004 ; Kupolati et al., 2015 ; Nguyen et al., 2015 ; OECD, 2017b ; Rush and Yan, 2017 ). Of course, both the regulation of food advertising and the work of nutritionists or doctors are essential factors for expanding and strengthening healthy eating habits among the population ( Worsley, 2002 ; Maixé-Altés, 2009 ; Robinson et al., 2013 ; Perveen, 2017 ; Rush and Yan, 2017 ; Schneider et al., 2017 ). Nevertheless, even though these factors may have an undeniable impact on the improvement in food health, they alone do not ensure that progress toward healthier eating practices is achieved. Even improving people's education cannot guarantee the strengthening of such practices, such as we have shown in this article ( Entrena-Durán et al., 2020 ).

The University students interviewed here have reached a high educational level, and consequently they engage in critical thinking that allows them to clearly discern between healthy and unhealthy food. However, this fact does not guarantee that all these students eat healthily. On the contrary, there is a gap between what the students know and how a significant proportion of them actually behave, and between what they express in their discourses and the concrete practices or eating habits they perceive or say they follow in their daily lives ( Martín Criado, 1998 ).

Our study has helped to reveal some of the causes behind this gap. So, the fact of focusing exclusively on University students has allowed this research to demonstrate that the circumstance of having a high educational level is not enough to ensure that there will be healthy eating habits. In addition to the educational level, a decisive element in order to achieve a healthy diet is to internalize food habits that make it possible. We have seen that these habits are strengthened as the interviewees' age increases. We have also found that most of women interviewed show healthier eating habits.

In the first place, we have observed that, as their age increases, the socio-economic and vital situation of interviewees is stabilizing, which favors that their eating habits become more regular and healthier, and this happens at the same time that the interviewees' awareness of the need to lead a more regulated and healthy lifestyle augments.

Secondly, with respect to gender, our research has shown that food education is more effective among women. This is so because women have traditionally been in charge of acquiring and preparing food at their homes. In other words, women's food education has not been restricted to the mere transmission to them of knowledge about what healthy food is, but from their childhood they were food trained through their active involvement in practical experiences. All this explains both why healthy eating habits are more strongly rooted in women and why these tend to have the best chances of assuming such habits.

Regarding Bourdieu's Concepts and the Assumption of Healthy Eating Habits

To understand eating habits shaping and assumption by individuals and the implementation of these habits, we can be inspired by the habitus and field concepts of Bourdieu (1991) . Therefore, the present study reveals that the reason why people eat healthily does not only depend on their knowledge of healthy food, but healthy eating is strongly influenced (hindered or furthered) by the habitus acquired by individuals. Moreover, in the case of the University students studied here, the strength of their eating habitus fluctuates according to their age and gender. These two variables, together with the specific contexts in which they act, constitute the particular circumstances under which people's eating habits develop day-by-day. In turn, the said circumstances play a key role in the processes of shaping, assuming and implementing eating habits and, according to Bourdieu, they create a sort of field (i.e., a social game space or scenario ) in which the production and reproduction of feeding-related discourses, practices and habits occur. Particularly, in the case of women, their socialization in the procurement and preparation of food has created a very optimal field for their internalization and effective assumption of a healthy food habitus , which according to Bourdieu, could be understood as the assumption of a set of durable dispositions or predispositions to buy, prepare and eat healthy food. We make this assertion based on the fact that, for Bourdieu (1991) , the habitus can be understood as a system of durable and transposable predispositions and dispositions that operate as schemes that generate and organize social practices. Simultaneously, these schemes incline people to act, perceive, value, feel and think in a certain way.

So understood, the habitus concept is very fruitful in explaining women's predisposition to assume the gender role of performing the tasks of buying, cooking and feeding their family group. Thus, women internalize a gender role that is nothing more than a product of history, i.e., a social construction. They assume this role as inherent to their gender identity, as if it were innate to their female nature and accept their supposed natural-psychological aptitudes for the said tasks. By acting in this way, women contribute to the reproduction of “male domination” over them while such domination is simultaneously legitimized as being grounded in biology ( Bourdieu, 2001 ).

According to this logic, the biological nature of men renders them better prepared than women to function outside the home. Thus, a fact whose causes are merely social tends to be legitimized as natural because men often have greater access to and control over the material and symbolic resources that underpin their predominance in the public sphere. Consistently, men—and society at large—think that when they are responsible for household chores, such as feeding the family, they are performing an exceptional task that is not inherent to their masculine nature. Men improve their self-esteem by assuming this role and achieve a social recognition that is based on a macho thought regardless of their intentions. This thought could be formulated as “what a good person that man is who help his wife with domestic chores and taking responsibility for these tasks when she is not at home or is sick.”

In contrast, even upon entering the public sphere, women have fewer opportunities to avoid their role as home caregivers. This role has been strongly internalized by most women as an inherent obligation due to their gender; thus, they tend to be highly self-demanding and blame themselves when they feel that they have failed their main responsibility when their home is not working well.

In particular, Bourdieu's (1991 ; 2001 ) conceptual framework and theories of gender socialization can be very useful tools for explaining the guilt that many women experience when they work outside the home and cannot exclusively dedicate themselves to household tasks. Some authors have noted that as long as home care is understood as a process associated with and undertaken by women, our society will not overcome labor, social and political segregation ( Doucet, 2009 ; Skærbæk, 2011 ). These authors emphasize that home caregiving should be understood as an existential condition of life that affects both men and women.

Unfortunately, the present study has shown that gender inequalities persist even among University students. Thus, both students sharing the same apartment and heterosexual couples living together, share a common situation in which the women continue to perform most of the domestic chores. In consequence, improving individuals' educational levels is insufficient. In addition, working on relations between genders is necessary for achieving a complete and effective redefinition of their habitus ( Bourdieu, 1991 ) in such a way that any predisposition or inclination that tends to legitimize or naturalize gender inequalities disappears. To achieve this goal, we must seek to inculcate egalitarian habits of behavior and relationship between both sexes from childhood. Undoubtedly, this task requires family socialization, training for gender equality at the different educational levels, and the media in general to stop the macho portrayals and stereotypes.

Consistently, men must be educated to be equally involved in domestic responsibilities and particularly to believe that the time devoted to feeding is not lost but instead is beneficial in terms of improving their health and because of the creativity it entails.

Some Limitations of Our Study and Suggestions for Future Research

The qualitative methodology of our research has permitted us to see, through the analysis of their discourses, how the interviewees experience and explain their food problems. The analysis of these discourses has allowed us to collect comprehensive information regarding the perceptions of both healthy food and healthy eating habits in Spain. Such depth of information could not have been obtained through a quantitative survey. However, this research has some limitations.

Interviewing an entire group of students who live together in the same flat could be beneficial, since this could allow us to contrast all information provided by each student. Nevertheless, it was not possible for the interviewees to bring their roommates to the interview, likely because of the lack of strong relational links between the flatmates.

Moreover, a comparative investigation that involved samples from different universities could have been intriguing. Nonetheless, such a study would require financial resources, which we lack. However, while it is true that the interviews were conducted exclusively at the University of Granada, as explained above, we selected a sample of interviewees in which we included a majority of students from outside Granada. Therefore, in some way, our sample is something representative to allow a certain degree of extrapolation of the results obtained here to other University contexts.

Recommendations for Policy Makers

Public policies can contribute by creating conditions that enable people to more easily develop healthy eating habits. For instance, by forcing the food industry to put clearer labeling. Moreover, such policies must ensure a sufficient supply of healthy food at affordable prices and they should promote and/or support food education. This education should focus not only on transmitting knowledge regarding healthy food, but also on training people to develop predispositions toward this type of food and acquire a healthy food habitus ( Bourdieu, 1991 ). Thus, it is very necessary to inculcate healthy eating habits in people through practical experiences. For example, by means of promoting access to rural environments and contact with nature from early childhood (through visits to school farms, field trips, etc.) not only to encourage greater physical exercise, but also to favor both knowledge of traditional and/or ecological products and some practical knowledge about sustainable and healthy food ( Paddock, 2017 ).

Educational actions, such as those abovementioned, favor the incorporation of healthy eating habits, which are best achieved when an adequate field or social game space is created for this purpose. This field has to be built by implementing policies, such as the creation of employment and improvements in wages and quality of work, which could increase people's purchasing power. These policies should be combined with all these other measures aimed at facilitating accessibility to healthy foods.

Furthermore, the consolidation of healthy food habits can be greatly favored by implementing policies that encourage the creation of conditions under which both men and women have more time to live with their families and perform household chores. Overall, these conditions could contribute to facilitating all members of the family to assume the responsibilities inherent in the acquisition and purchasing of food regardless of their gender.

The present study suggests that, in their position, women have some advantages over men in developing healthy food habits. Obviously, a solution is to not perpetuate macho gender stereotypes that assign women the role of home caregivers, but to seek the establishment of a society in which the economic value of domestic labor is recognized and women and men should have the opportunity, and the duty, to experience equally those practical experiences that involve the tasks of the acquisition and preparation of food. The fact of working for the achievement of a socioeconomic situation in which this is possible, not only has a positive impact on the advancement of gender equality, but also it contributes to creating more adequate conditions to overcome the disadvantages men have due to their lack of training to perform the home care services and, in particular, the tasks of buying and preparing food, either for themselves or for their families.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets on which the writing of this article has been based are not made available to readers. The main reason for this is to prevent the people interviewed for this research from being identified. Any additional clarification about the interviews conducted may be requested from the corresponding author of this paper. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to fentrena@ugr.es .

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee in Human Research of the University of Granada. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

FE-D and HB-L: conception, conceptualization, design, original draft, methodology, research, and analysis. FE-D and J-MV-G: methodology, analysis, writing, and final review. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

No scholarship or financial aid was requested or granted specifically for conducting the research on which this study is based. However, such research was carried out within the framework of the Research Group Social Problems in Andalusia (SEJ-129), which is financed by the Regional Government of Andalusia and the Government of the Spanish State.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We thank all those University students who kindly participated in this research.

AECOSAN (2012). Código de Corregulación de la Publicidad de Alimentos y Bebidas Dirigida a Menores, Prevención de la Obesidad y Salud . 1–18. Available online at: http://www.aecosan.msssi.gob.es/AECOSAN/docs/documentos/nutricion/Nuevo_Codigo_PAOS_2012_espanol.pdf (accessed November 25, 2020).

Google Scholar

Almerico, G. M. (2014). Food and identity: food studies, cultural, and personal identity. J. Int. Bus. Cult. Stud. 8, 1–7. Available online at: https://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/141797.pdf (accessed January 25, 2021).

Bandura, A. (2004). Health promotion by social cognitive means. Heal. Educ. Behav. 31, 143–164. doi: 10.1177/1090198104263660

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (2009). La Dimens. Cult. del cibo, 36 . Available online at: https://www.barillacfn.com/m/publications/pp-dimensione-culturale-cibo.pdf (accessed February 2, 2021).

Becerra, F., Pinzón, G., and Vargas, M. (2015). Practicas alimentarias de un grupo de estudiantes universitarios y las dificultades percibidas para realizar una alimentación saludable. Rev. Fac. Med. 63, 457–463. doi: 10.15446/revfacmed.v63n3.48516

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Berger, P. L., and Luckmann, T. (1979). La Construcción Social de la Realidad . Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.

Bourdieu, P. (1991). El Sentido Práctico . Madrid: Taurus.

Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine Domination . Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Cobb-Clark, D. A., Kassenboehmer, S. C., and Schurer, S. (2012). Healthy habits: the connection between diet, exercise, and locus of control. SSRN Electron. J. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2146274. Available online at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2146274# (accessed January 20, 2021).

Cox, R. (2014). Food and eating: an anthropological perspective. Soc. Issues Res. 1–22. Available online at: http://www.sirc.org/publik/foxfood.pdf (accessed on December 22, 2020).

Cubero-Juánez, J., Franco-Reynolds, L., Calderón, M., Caro, B., Rodrigo, M., and Ruiz, C. (2017). El desayuno escolar; una intervención educativa en alimentación y nutrición saludable. Didáctica las Ciencias Exp. Soc. 32, 171–182. doi: 10.7203/dces.32.4546

Darmon, N., and Drewnowski, A. (2008). Does social class predict diet quality? Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 87, 1107–1117. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/87.5.1107

De Irala-Estévez, J., Groth, M., Johansson, L., Oltersdorf, U., Prättälä, R., and Martínez-González, M. A. (2000). A systematic review of socio-economic differences in food habits in Europe: consumption of fruit and vegetables. Eur. J. Clin. Nutr. 54, 706–714. doi: 10.1038/sj.ejcn.1601080

De Ridder, D., Kroese, F., Evers, C., Adriaanse, M., and Gillebaart, M. (2017). Healthy diet: health impact, prevalence, correlates, and interventions. Psychol. Heal. 32, 907–941. doi: 10.1080/08870446.2017.1316849

Dernini, S., Berry, E. M., Serra-Majem, L., La Vecchia, C., Capone, R., Medina, F. X., et al. (2017). Med Diet 4.0: the mediterranean diet with four sustainable benefits. Public Health Nutr. 20, 1322–1330. doi: 10.1017/S1368980016003177

Díaz-Méndez, C., and Gómez-Benito, C., (eds.). (2008). Alimentación, Consumo y Salud (Colección Estudios Sociales, num. 24) . Barcelona: Fundación “la Caixa”.

Doucet, A. (2009). Gender equality and gender differences: parenting, habitus and embodiment. Can. Rev. Sociol. 48, 99–117. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-618x.2009.01206.x

Entrena-Durán, F., Baldan-Lozano, H., and Valdera-Gil, J. M. (2020). “La salubridad de los hábitos alimenticios de los estudiantes universitarios: un estudio de caso,” in Análisis y Enfoques Novedosos Para Contenidos Culturales , ed M. Rodorigo (Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch).

FAO (2008). Doc. apoyo para la Asign. Ciencia, Salud y Medio Educ. en Nutr. Segur. y huertos Esc. , 84. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Available online at: http://www.fao.org/3/a-am278s.pdf (accessed February 1, 2021).

Fischler, C. (1980). Food habits, social change and the nature/culture dilemma. Soc. Sci. Inf. 19, 937–953. doi: 10.1177/053901848001900603

Ganasegeran, K., Al-Dubai, S. A. R., Qureshi, A. M., Al-Abed, A. A. A., Am, R., and Aljunid, S. M. (2012). Social and psychological factors affecting eating habits among University students in a Malaysian medical school: a cross-sectional study. Nutr. J. 11:48. doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-11-48

García-Cardona, M., Pardío-López, J., Arroyo-Acevedo, P., Fernández-García, V., and García, M. (2008). Dinàmica familiar y su relaciòn con hàbitos alimentarios. Estud. sobre las Cult. Contemp. XIV , 27, 9–46. Available online at: https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=31602702 (accessed January 20, 2021).

González-Díaz, C. (2013). La publicidad dirigida a niños en el sector de la alimentación: un estudio atendiendo al tipo de producto/Food advertising targeted to children: a study on type product. Hist. Comun. Soc. 18, 175–187. doi: 10.5209/rev_HICS.2013.v18.44235

Gracia-Arnáiz, M. (2010). Alimentación y cultura en España: una aproximación desde la antropología social. Phys. Rev. Saúde Colet. 20, 357–386. doi: 10.1590/S0103-73312010000200003

Grosso, G., Bella, F., Godos, J., Sciacca, S., Del Rio, D., Ray, S., et al. (2017). Possible role of diet in cancer: systematic review and multiple meta-analyses of dietary patterns, lifestyle factors, and cancer risk. Nutr. Rev. 75, 405–419. doi: 10.1093/nutrit/nux012

Guenther, P. M., Casavale, K. O., Reedy, J., Kirkpatrick, S. I., Hiza, H. A. B., Kuczynski, K. J., et al. (2013). Update of the Healthy Eating Index: HEI-2010. J. Acad. Nutr. Diet. 113, 569–580. doi: 10.1016/j.jand.2012.12.016

Higgs, S., and Ruddock, H. (2020). “Social influences on eating,” in Handbook of Eating and Drinking (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 277–291. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-14504-0_27

Horská, E., Petrilák, M., Šedík, P., and Nagyová, L. (2020). Factors influencing the sale of local products through short supply chains: a case of family dairy farms in Slovakia. Sustainability 12:8499. doi: 10.3390/su12208499

Ibáñez, J. (1997). Por Una Sociología de la Vida Cotidiana . Madrid: Siglo XXI.

INE (2019). Indicadores Calid. Vida Salud autopercibida . INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística). Available online at: https://www.ine.es/ss/Satellite?L=es_ESandc=INESeccion_Candcid=1259944485720andp=1254735110672andpagename=ProductosYServicios%2FPYSLayoutandparam1=PYSDetalleFichaIndicadorandparam3=1259937499084andrendermode=pr+eviewnoinsite (accessed February 2, 2021).

Isaza, L. (2012). El contexto familiar: un factor determinante en el desarrollo social de los niños y las niñas. Rev. Electrón. Psicol. Soc. 23, 1–6. Available online at: https://www.funlam.edu.co/revistas/index.php/poiesis/article/view/332/305 (accessed February 14, 2021).

Kupolati, M. D., Gericke, G. J., and MacIntyre, U. E. (2015). Teachers' perceptions of school nutrition education's influence on eating behaviours of learners in the Bronkhorstspruit District. South African J. Educ. 35:1049. doi: 10.15700/saje.v35n2a1049

León-Flández, K., Rico-Gómez, A., Moya-Geromin, M., Romero-Fernández, M., Bosqued-Estefania, M. J., Damián, J., et al. (2017). Evaluation of compliance with the Spanish Code of self-regulation of food and drinks advertising directed at children under the age of 12 years in Spain, 2012. Public Health 150, 121–129. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2017.05.013

Levine, C. S., Miyamoto, Y., Markus, H. R., Rigotti, A., Boylan, J. M., Park, J., et al. (2016). Culture and healthy eating: the role of independence and interdependence in the United States and Japan. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 42, 1335–1348. doi: 10.1177/0146167216658645

Maixé-Altés, J. (2009). La modernización de la distribución alimentaria en España, 1947-1995. Rev. Hist. Ind. 18, 125–160. Available online at: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/HistoriaIndustrial/article/view/20486 (accessed January 20, 2021).

Martín Criado, E. (1998). Los decires y los haceres. Pap. Rev. Sociol. 56, 57–71. doi: 10.5565/rev/papers.1944

Martín Criado, E. (2004). El valor de la buena madre: oficio de ama de casa, alimentación y salud entre las mujeres de clases populares. Rev. Espan. Sociol . 93–118. Available online at: https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/res/article/view/64944/39354 (accessed February 18, 2021).

Martinez-Lacoba, R., Pardo-Garcia, I., Amo-Saus, E., and Escribano-Sotos, F. (2018). Mediterranean diet and health outcomes: a systematic meta-review. Eur. J. Public Health 28, 955–961. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/cky113

Nguyen, B. H., Nguyen, C. P., McPhee, S. J., Stewart, S. L., Bui-Tong, N., and Nguyen, T. T. (2015). Cognitive interviews of vietnamese americans on healthy eating and physical activity health educational materials. Ecol. Food Nutr. 54, 455–469. doi: 10.1080/03670244.2015.1015119

OCU (2017). OCU Inf. Los Españoles Quieren Aliment. Mejor. Pero no lo Consiguen . OCU (Organization of Consumers and Users). Available at: https://www.ocu.org/organizacion/prensa/notas-de-prensa/2017/habitos-alimentarios-250817 (accessed December 28, 2020).

OCU (2019). “ 10% menos de azúcar, grasas saturadas y sal en alimentos procesados? #NoCuela. OCU (Organization of Consumers and Users). Available online at: https://www.ocu.org/alimentacion/alimentos/noticias/alimentos-procesados-reducir-grasa-azucar-plan (accessed November 29, 2020).

OECD (2017a). Obes. Updat. 2017 . OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). Available at: https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/Obesity-Update-2017.pdf (accessed November 27, 2020).

OECD (2017b). Heal. a Glance 2017 OECD Indic . OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). Available online at: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2017_health_glance-2017-en (accessed October 25, 2020).

Oliffe, J. L., Bottorff, J. L., Sharp, P., Caperchione, C. M., Johnson, S. T., Healy, T., et al. (2017). Healthy eating and active living: rural-based working men's perspectives. Am. J. Mens. Health 11, 1664–1672. doi: 10.1177/1557988315619372

Paddock, J. (2017). Household consumption and environmental change: rethinking the policy problem through narratives of food practice. J. Consum. Cult. 17, 122–139. doi: 10.1177/1469540515586869

Parham, S. C., Kavanagh, D. J., Gericke, C. A., King, N., May, J., and Andrade, J. (2017). Assessment of motivational cognitions in diabetes self-care: the motivation thought frequency scales for glucose testing, physical activity and healthy eating. Int. J. Behav. Med. 24, 447–456. doi: 10.1007/s12529-016-9607-2

Pérez-Rodrigo, C., and Aranceta, J. (2001). School-based nutrition education: lessons learned and new perspectives. Public Health Nutr. 4, 131–139. doi: 10.1079/PHN2000108

Perveen, R. (2017). Assessing the influence of nutrition education among adolescent girls (13-16 years). Adv. Obesity, Weight Manag. Control 6, 144–147. doi: 10.15406/aowmc.2017.06.00167

CrossRef Full Text

Robinson, E., Blissett, J., and Higgs, S. (2013). Social influences on eating: implications for nutritional interventions. Nutr. Res. Rev. 26, 166–176. doi: 10.1017/S0954422413000127

Ruiz-Moreno, E., Del-Pozo-de-la-Calle, S., Valero-Gaspar, T., Ávila-Torres, J. M., and Varela-Moreiras, G. (2013). Estudio de Hábitos Alimentarios y Estilos de Vida de los Universitarios Españoles. Patrón de consumo de bebidas fermentadas. Fund. Española la Nutr . 1–32. Available online at: http://www.fen.org.es/storage/app/media/imgPublicaciones/30092014131915.pdf (accessed November 24, 2020).

Rush, E. C., and Yan, M. R. (2017). Evolution not revolution: nutrition and obesity. Nutrients 9:519. doi: 10.3390/nu9050519

Saucedo, T., Peña, A., Fernández, L., García, A., and Jiménez, R. (2010). Identificación de factores de riesgo asociados a trastornos de la conducta alimentaria y su relación con el Índice de Masa Corporal en universitarios del Instituto de Ciencias de la Salud. Rev. Med. UV 10, 16–23. Available online at: https://www.medigraphic.com/pdfs/veracruzana/muv-2010/muv102c.pdf (accessed December 16, 2020).

Schneider, S., Diehl, K., Görig, T., Schilling, L., De Bock, F., Hoffmann, K., et al. (2017). Contextual influences on physical activity and eating habits-options for action on the community level. BMC Public Health 17:760. doi: 10.1186/s12889-017-4790-x

Silva, T. H., Vaz De Melo, P. O. S., Almeida, J., Musolesi, M., and Loureiro, A. (2014). “You are what you eat (and Drink): identifying cultural boundaries by analyzing food and drink habits in foursquare,” in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, ICWSM 2014 (Palo Alto, CA: The AAAI Press), 466–475.

Skærbæk, E. (2011). Navigating in the landscape of care: A critical reflection on theory and practise of care and ethics. in Health Care Analysis (Kluwer Academic Publishers) , 41–50. doi: 10.1007/s10728-010-0157-5

SPH (2005). SPH (Spanish Ministry of Health). Mañana entra en vigor el Código PAOS autorregulación la Public. Destin. a menores para Combat. la Obes. Infant . Available online at: http://www.fundaciondiabetes.org/upload/noticias/4694/23.pdf (accessed January 18, 2021).

The Nielsen Company (2015). We Are What We Eat, 27 . Available online at: https://www.nielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/04/Nielsen20Global20Health20and20Wellness20Report20-20January202015-1.pdf (accessed January 26, 2021).

Trichopoulou, A., Naska, A., and Costacou, T. (2002). Disparities in food habits across Europe. Proc. Nutr. Soc. 61, 553–558. doi: 10.1079/PNS2002188

Troncoso, P. C., and Amaya, P. J. P. (2009). Factores sociales en las conductas alimentarias de estudiantes universitarios. Rev. Chil. Nutr. 36, 1090–1097. doi: 10.4067/S0717-75182009000400005

Vallejo-Alviter, N. G., and Martínez-Moctezuma, E. (2017). Impacto de la promoción de estilos de vida saludable para mejorar la calidad de vida. Drugs Addict. Behav. 2, 225–235. doi: 10.21501/24631779.2442

Verplanken, B., and Faes, S. (1999). Good intentions, bad habits, and effects of forming implementation intentions on healthy eating. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 29, 591–604. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199908/09)29:5/6<591::AID-EJSP948>3.0.CO;2-H

WHO (2014). “European food and nutrition action plan 2015 – 2020,” in Regional Committee For Europe 64th Session (Copenhagen).

WHO (2018). Better Food and Nutrition in Europe: A Progress Report Monitoring Policy Implementation in the WHO European Region . World Heal. Organ. Reg. Off. Eur., 51.

WHO (2020). World Health Statistics 2020: Monitoring Health for the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals .

Willett, W. C., Sacks, F., Trichopoulou, A., Drescher, G., Ferro-Luzzi, A., Helsing, E., et al. (1995). Mediterranean diet pyramid: a cultural model for healthy eating. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 61, 14025–14065. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/61.6.1402S

Worsley, A. (2002). Nutrition knowledge and food consumption: can nutrition knowledge change food behaviour? Asia Pac. J. Clin. Nutr. 11(Suppl 3), S579–S585. doi: 10.1046/j.1440-6047.11.supp3.7.x

Annex: Questionnaire Used to Do the Interviews

We asked the interviewees open questions. Before starting the interviews, we read them the following paragraph:

“Dear student,

We invite you to participate in this project on the eating habits of the University's student population, whose basic objective is to analyze these habits and the greater or lesser healthiness of them from the self-perception that the own students have. Your participation is totally voluntary. We need you to answer a semi-structured interview, which you are free to interrupt when you deem it convenient or to refuse to answer any of the questions. To enable the analysis of the results, the interview must be recorded. However, this audio will not be used to disclose your personal data at any time. In fact, you will not even be asked your name during the recording and you will only be asked to indicate your age, the type of studies you do, if you live with your parents or with other students, as well as other information. The objective of this is that we who do this research can classify and then study the information you provide us, which will be considered in an aggregate manner, without linking it to your name or any other data from which you can be identified. The recording will be used exclusively to extract the information provided with the aforementioned study purpose. Your participation in the interview, voluntary, and unpaid, assumes that you authorize the use of the information you provide us. However, at any time you can decide to withdraw from the survey and demand that the information you have up to that moment be destroyed. Your participation in the current investigation, or your refusal to do so, will not affect in any way the qualification of any of the matters you are currently studying or your possibilities of academic promotion.”

Next, we made the interviews in which we asked the following open questions:

Summary of the interview guide

Opening questions: How old are you? What are you studying at University? Where do you live? Who do you live with?

Topic 1: Daily routine related to eating habits.

Do you make your own purchases? If you do not , why? Who makes the purchases in your home? If you do , how much time do you spend making purchases on average? Do you cook in your house? If you do not , who cooks in your house? Why? If you do , how much time do you spend cooking on average daily? Do you pay attention to the labels on eating products? In the case that you do not live with your parents, do you need any help preparing your own meals? If yes, who usually helps you and how? The interviewees have to explain their answers .

Topic 2: Personal knowledge of and putting into practice healthy eating habits.

I am going to mention some eating products, and you [interviewee] have to say which product is healthy and which is not. Any answer provided by an interviewee must be explained . What would you consider a healthy diet? Do you consider your eating habits healthy? Regardless of his/her answer, he/she must explain .

Topic 3: Problems found by interviewees and possible solutions.

In your opinion, what social, cultural, economic or political problems can hinder the strengthening of healthy eating habits within Spanish society? Please, describe and explain these problems in greater depth. What types of solutions do you think can help solve these problems? Please, explain in greater depth.

Keywords: food healthiness, students, feeding, self-perception of food, effects of age and gender, discourse analysis

Citation: Entrena-Durán F, Baldan-Lozano H and Valdera-Gil J-M (2021) Students' Knowledge of Healthy Food and Their Actual Eating Habits: A Case Study on the University of Granada (Spain). Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 5:687574. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2021.687574

Received: 29 March 2021; Accepted: 25 May 2021; Published: 18 June 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Entrena-Durán, Baldan-Lozano and Valdera-Gil. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Francisco Entrena-Durán, fentrena@ugr.es

This article is part of the Research Topic

Consumer Behavior and Sustainability in the Food Chain

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

• The New Food Fights: U.S. Public Divides Over Food Science
• 1. Public views about Americans’ eating habits

Table of Contents

• 2. Americans’ views about and consumption of organic foods
• 3. Public opinion about genetically modified foods and trust in scientists connected with these foods
• About this report
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

The American food scene has undergone considerable change over the past two decades. During this period, the public has seen the introduction of genetically modified crops, the mainstreaming of organic foods into America’s supermarkets, 4  and the proliferation of chefs elevated to celebrity status within popular culture.

Over the same period, there has been a marked increase in public health concerns about the growing prevalence of obesity among both children and adults. Perhaps sparked by thinking from people such as Michael Pollan, 5 Mark Bittman, 6 and documentaries such as Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me,” Americans thinking about food has shifted dramatically.

Concerns about obesity, food allergies and other health effects of food are fueling a new level of scrutiny of chemicals and additives in foods and contribute to shifting notions about portion size, sugar and fat content. 7 Consumption of sugary sodas has dropped to a 30-year low while sales of bottled and flavored water rose dramatically over the past few decades. Zero-calorie diet sodas long held allure for Americans concerned about their weight, but sales of diet sodas have also dropped, with at least some arguing that the decline has been fueled by growing public concern about ingesting artificial sweeteners and other food additives. 8 America’s love affair with fast-food chains is on the wane, with “fast casual” brands that offer convenient options which focus on natural, fresh ingredients gaining favor. 9

To some degree this is reflected in the emergence of distinct groups that can be identified by their focus on food issues and personal eating habits. New thinking about ways to eat healthy helped launch a number of eating “movements” with proponents arguing that Paleo, anti-inflammatory or vegan diets bring health benefits along with better weight control. Food and the way we eat has become a potential source of social friction as people follow their own ideologies about what to eat and how foods connect with people’s ailments.

During this same period, there have been sometimes strident public debates over science-related topics – most prominently on climate change, but also on a host of others including the environmental impacts of fracking and nuclear power, the safety of childhood vaccines and, of course, the safety of genetically modified foods. A previous Pew Research Center report showed that public attitudes on a wide range of science issues were widely divergent from those of members of the American Association of Advancement of Science (AAAS). In fact, the largest differences between the public and members of the AAAS were beliefs about the safety of eating genetically modified (GM) foods. Nearly nine-in-ten (88%) AAAS members said it is generally safe to eat GM foods compared with 37% of the general public, a difference of 51 percentage points. The wide differences of opinion over GM foods is connected with a broader public discourse over the role of science research and, perhaps, scientific expertise in understanding and crafting policy solutions.

This new Pew Research Center survey explores public thinking about scientists and their research on GM foods in some detail. As such, this survey can help address the ways in which public views of and trust in scientists may contribute to an opinion divide between the public and members of the scientific community on these issues.

In broad strokes, the survey shows that Americans believe the public is paying more attention to healthy eating today than they did 20 years ago. But, it is not clear to the public whether people are actually eating healthier today. About half of U.S. adults think the eating habits of Americans are less healthy today than they were 20 years ago and most point the blame at both the quantity and quality of what people eat.

Many Americans adopt their own food and eating philosophies because they have to – or want to. Some 15% of U.S. adults say they have at least mild allergies to one or more foods and another 17% have intolerances to foods. Food allergies are more common among women, blacks and people with chronic lung conditions such as asthma. A small minority of Americans describe themselves as either strictly or mostly eating vegan or vegetarian diets.

Americans are paying attention to healthy eating, but many miss the mark

Collectively, the American public is paying more attention to healthy eating, but not fully embracing what they learn. At least, that’s how most Americans see things, according to this survey.

Some 54% of Americans say that compared with 20 years ago, people in the U.S. pay more attention to eating healthy foods today. Smaller shares say people pay less attention (26%) or about the same amount of attention (19%) to eating healthy today.

But 54% of Americans say eating habits in the U.S. are less healthy than they were 20 years ago. A minority (29%) say eating habits are healthier today, while 17% say they are about the same.

The public points the finger at both quality and quantity in Americans’ eating habits. When asked which is the bigger source of problems in Americans’ eating habits, more say the issue is what people eat, not how much (24% vs. 12%). But a 63% majority says that both are equally big problems in the U.S. today.

These beliefs are somewhat tied to people’s focus on food issues. People who care a great deal about the issue of GM foods are particularly likely to say Americans’ eating habits have deteriorated over the past two decades: 67% hold this view, compared with 53% among those not at all or not too concerned about the GM foods issue. People focused on eating healthy and nutritious are relatively more inclined to say the types of food people eat is a bigger problem in the U.S. today than the overall amount (34%, compared with 21% among those not at all or not too focused on healthy and nutritious eating.)

What’s driving public attention to eating? One factor may be a belief in the oft-repeated adage “you are what you eat.” Roughly seven-in-ten adults (72%) say that healthy eating habits are very important for improving a person’s chances of living a long and healthy life.

A similar share (71%) says getting enough exercise is very important. Some 61% say safe and healthy housing conditions are very important. But fewer – 47% – believe genetics and hereditary factors are critical to improving a person’s chances of a long and healthy life. Thus, most Americans consider their future health within their own grasps — if only they eat and exercise adequately.

People focused on food issues are particularly likely to believe that healthy eating habits are important. Fully 86% of those focused on eating healthy and nutritious say that healthy eating habits are very important, compared with 56% among those with little focus on eating healthy and nutritious. And, 87% of those with a deep personal concern about the issue of GM foods say that healthy eating habits are very important for a long and healthy life, compared with 68% among those with no or not too much concern about the GM foods issue.

Americans have a variety of eating styles and philosophies about food

Americans have many different approaches to eating. More say they focus on taste and nutrition than say they focus on convenience. Almost one-quarter (23%) of Americans say the statement “I focus on the taste sensations of every meal” describes them very well, while another 53% say this statement describes them fairly well. Similar shares say their “main focus is on eating healthy and nutritious,” with 18% saying this statement describes them very well and 55% saying it describes them fairly well.

Smaller shares say the statements “I usually eat whatever is easy and most convenient” and “I eat when necessary but don’t care very much about what I eat,” describe them very well (12% and 7%, respectively). People with a particular concern about the GM foods issue and people focused on eating healthy and nutritious are less likely to describe themselves as unconcerned about what they eat.

But, when Americans judge their own eating habits, a majority see themselves falling short. Some 58% of U.S. adults say that “most days I should probably be eating healthier.” About four-in-ten (41%) hit their eating targets about right, saying they eat about what they should most days.

Those who are focused on eating healthy are, by and large, satisfied with their eating. Seven-in-ten (70%) of this group says they eat about what they should on most days. By contrast, 86% of people who describe themselves as not at all or not too focused on healthy eating say they should probably be eating healthier on most days.

There are more modest differences in eating assessments by degree of concern about the issue of GM foods; 51% of those who care a great deal about the issue of GM foods says they eat about they should most days, compared with 37% of those with no particular concern or not too much concern about this issue.

Sizable minority of Americans have food allergies or intolerances to foods

More children and adults are experiencing allergic reactions to foods today. Concern about food allergies and sensitivities can be seen in many places – from the regulations governing the public school lunch program to the way restaurants and food manufacturers package and offer alternatives to the most common allergens. 10  For example, people with lactose intolerance can now choose from a wide range of milk and dairy alternatives made from soy and nuts. People allergic to the gluten in wheat can choose among special menu selections, even whole bakeries devoted to gluten-free options.

About 15% of U.S. adults say they have severe, moderate or mild allergies to at least one kind of food. Another 17% of adults have food intolerances, but no food allergies. Roughly seven-in-ten of the adult public (69%) has no food intolerances or allergies.

More women than men report food allergies. About two-in-ten (19%) women say they have severe, moderate or mild food allergies, compared with 11% of men. And, blacks are more likely to say they have food allergies (27%) than either whites (13%) or Hispanics (11%). In other respects, those with food allergies reflect a mix of demographic and educational backgrounds 11

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports a higher prevalence of asthma among children with food allergies. The Pew Research Center survey finds 29% of adults with asthma or another chronic lung condition have food allergies, compared with 12% among those who do not have chronic lung conditions.

Vegans and vegetarians are a small minority of U.S., but they are a bit more common among younger generations and liberal Democrats

Vegetarianism has been around for centuries and interest in following this diet – most commonly defined as omitting meat and fish – has waxed and waned over time. Today, vegetarian options are commonplace at many restaurants and food proprietors. Some of those who avoid meat and fish go a step further; vegans typically omit all foods that originate from animals including eggs and dairy products. But some people who consider themselves either vegetarian or vegan are “flexible” about what they eat and at least occasionally veer from these eating principles.

The Pew Research Center survey asked for people’s own assessment of whether the terms vegan and vegetarian applied to them. A small minority – 9% – of U.S. adults identifies as either strict vegetarians or vegans (3%) or as mostly vegetarian or vegan (6%). The vast majority of Americans (91%) say they are neither vegetarian nor vegan.

Younger generations are more likely than others to identify as at least mostly vegan or vegetarian. Some 12% of adults ages 18 to 49 are at least mostly vegan or vegetarian, compared with 5% among those ages 50 and older. Men and women are equally likely to be vegan or vegetarian. There are no differences across region of the country, education or family income in the share who is vegan or vegetarian. There are more liberal Democrats in the vegan and vegetarian group, however. Some 15% of liberal Democrats are at least mostly vegan or vegetarian, compared 4% among conservative Republicans. 12

People who have food allergies are more likely to be vegan or vegetarian, suggesting that some food restrictions stem from adverse reactions to certain foods. Among adults with food allergies, 21% identify as strictly or mostly following vegan or vegetarian diets. Just 8% of adults with food intolerances (but no allergies) and 6% of adults with neither food allergies nor intolerances are vegan or vegetarian. Thus, about a third of people who identify as at least mostly vegan or vegetarian also report food allergies.

Social networks: friends eat like friends

People tend to cluster together in social networks with others who are similar. The Pew Research Center survey finds this social pattern also occurs when it comes to people’s eating philosophies and dietary habits.

Most Americans say that at least some of their closest friends and family focus on eating healthy and nutritious. Some 68% say this, while 32% say only a few or none of their friends and family does this.

Adults who say the statement “my main focus is on eating healthy and nutritious” describes them at least very or fairly well are more likely to say at least some of their closest family and friends do the same.

A minority of the population (24%) says that most or some of their closest family and friends have food intolerances or food allergies. Among those who say that they, personally, have severe to mild allergies to some foods, a larger share (51%) says at least some of their closest family and friends also have intolerances or allergies.

A similar pattern occurs when it comes to vegetarians and vegans. Some 12% of U.S. adults say that at least some of their close family and friends are vegan or vegetarian. But there are stark differences in social network composition among those who are, personally, vegan or vegetarian and those who are not. Fully 52% of people who are at least mostly vegan or vegetarian say that some or most of their closest family and friends also follow vegan or vegetarian diets. Just 8% of people who are not themselves vegan or vegetarian say the same.

Many Americans say it’s good party hosting behavior to inquire about food restrictions; few say it bothers them when guests ask for dietary accommodations

Businesses have changed what foods they offer and how foods are packaged to accommodate Americans’ diverse dietary needs and preferences over the past decade or more. What do people think about accommodating people’s eating needs and preferences at private social gatherings? The Pew Research Center survey finds 37% of Americans say that, when hosting social gatherings, the host should always ask guests ahead of time if they have any food restrictions or allergies. One-quarter say they should do this sometimes, while 37% believe the host should never or not too often ask about food restrictions before hosting social gatherings.

When they are the host, a minority (31%) of Americans say it bothers them at least some when guests ask for special kinds of food options at their social gatherings. Larger shares say it bothers them not too much (37%) or not at all (30%) when someone asks for special food accommodations at their social gatherings.

Americans’ beliefs about proper hosting behavior tend to be related to their own food ideologies. About half (49%) of those with a deep personal concern about the GM foods issue say that hosts should always ask guests about dietary needs; this compares with 32% of those with no or not too much concern about the GM foods issue. But people who themselves have food allergies are about equally likely as other adults to say that a host should ask about food allergies ahead of a gathering. And, like other Americans, a minority of those focused on food issues say they are bothered at least some when guests ask for special food options at a gathering they host.

Food studies and their conflicting findings abound, but most Americans see this as a sign of progress

A clear sign that many Americans are thinking about food is that they are paying attention to news and research studies on the subject. Fully two-thirds (66%) of the public says they hear or read news stories about the health effects of what people eat and drink every day (23%) or a few times a week (43%). About one-quarter (24%) say they see these news stories a few times a month while 9% report seeing these stories less often than that.

And many Americans perceive such studies as contradicting prior news reports at least some of the time. About half of U.S. adults (51%) say they hear or read news stories about the health effects of foods that conflict with earlier studies some of the time and roughly one-in-five (21%) say this occurs all the time. A minority of Americans (26%) say this does not occur at all or not too often.

People who regularly follow news about food and health issues are particularly likely to see news stories with contradictory findings. Some 50% of Americans who follow news about the health effects of foods on a daily basis say they see conflicting news reports about food all the time. Just 17% of those who hear or read food news a few times a week say that conflicting stories about the health effects of food and drink occur all the time and 9% of people who less regularly attend to food news say conflicting reports occur all the time.

There is considerable concern in the science community that this whiplash effect might confuse Americans and affect their views of the trustworthiness of science findings. The survey included two questions to shed light on how the public makes sense of contradictory findings about the health effects of foods.

A majority of the American public (61%) says “new research is constantly improving our understanding about the health effects of what people eat and drink, so it makes sense that these findings conflict with prior studies,” while a 37% minority says “research about the health effects of what people eat and drink cannot really be trusted because so many studies conflict with each other.”

People’s focus on food issues is not strongly related to beliefs about news stories with conflicting findings. Instead, people’s general levels of knowledge about science, based on a nine-item index, tie to how people make sense of conflicting food studies in the news. Some 74% of those high in science knowledge say studies with findings that conflict with prior studies are signs that new research is constantly improving. But those in low science knowledge are closely divided over whether such studies are signs of improving research (46%) or show that food research cannot really be trusted (50%).

And, fully 72% of U.S. adults say even though new studies sometimes conflict with prior findings “the core ideas about how to eat healthy are pretty well understood.” Only one-quarter of the public (25%) feels overwhelmed by the inconsistent findings, saying, “It is difficult to know how to eat healthy because there is so much conflicting information.”

Here, too, beliefs are closely linked with people’s level of knowledge about science. Fully 92% of those high in science knowledge say the core ideas about how to eat healthy are pretty well understood as do 78% of those with medium science knowledge. But those low in science knowledge are closely split with half (50%) saying the core ideas of how to eat healthy are pretty well understood and 47% saying it is difficult to know how to eat healthy because there is so much conflicting information. Thus, Americans with less grounding in science information appear to be more confused by and distrustful of research with contradictory findings about food and health effects.

• Catherine Greene, Seth J. Wechsler, Aaron Adalja and James Hanson, Feb. 2016. “ Economic Issues in the Coexistence of Organic, Genetically Engineered (GE) and non-GE Crops ” Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. ↩
• Michael Pollan. 2006. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” New York: Penguin Press. ↩
• See for example, the opening column for ‘The Flexitarian,’ Mark Bittman, “ Healthy, Meet Delicious ,” New York Times, April 23, 2013. ↩
• See for example, Hans Taparia and Pamela Koch, “ A Seismic Shift in How People Eat ,” New York Times, Nov. 6, 2015. Scott Mowbray, “ The Rise of the New Food Culture ,” The Huffington Post, Dec 10, 2012. Jeff Green and Craig Giammona. “ How Halal Food Became a $20 Billion Hit in America ,” Bloomberg, Sept. 14, 2016. ↩
• See Sanger-Katz, Margot. “ The Decline of ‘Big Soda,’ ” New York Times, Oct. 2, 2015. ↩
• See Specter, Michael. “ Freedom from Fries: Can fast food be good for you? ” The New Yorker, Nov. 2, 2015. ↩
• A report by the CDC finds an increase in reported food allergies among children between 1997 and 2011. ↩
• Differences by gender and race in self-report food allergies are consistent with a report from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. ↩
• These figures combine those who identify as either Democratic or Republican with independents who lean to each party, respectively. ↩

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

Sign up for The Briefing

Weekly updates on the world of news & information

• Climate, Energy & Environment
• Emerging Technology
• Health Policy
• Medicine & Health

Most Popular

Report materials.

• American Trends Panel Wave 17

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Age & Generations
• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• Methodological Research
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Politics & Policy
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 26 February 2019

Nutrition quality of food purchases varies by household income: the SHoPPER study

• Simone A. French 1 ,
• Christy C. Tangney 2 ,
• Melissa M. Crane 3 ,
• Yamin Wang 4 &
• Bradley M. Appelhans 3  

BMC Public Health volume  19 , Article number:  231 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

152k Accesses

219 Citations

123 Altmetric

Metrics details

Lower household income has been consistently associated with poorer diet quality. Household food purchases may be an important intervention target to improve diet quality among low income populations. Associations between household income and the diet quality of household food purchases were examined.

Food purchase receipt data were collected for 14 days from 202 urban households participating in a study about food shopping. Purchase data were analyzed using NDS-R software and scored using the Healthy Eating Index 2010 (HEI 2010). HEI total and subscores, and proportion of grocery dollars spent on food categories (e.g. fruits, vegetables, sugar sweetened beverages) were examined by household income-to-poverty ratio.

Compared to lower income households, after adjusting for education, marital status and race, higher income households had significantly higher HEI total scores (mean [sd] = 68.2 [13.3] versus 51.6 [13.9], respectively, adjusted p  = 0.05), higher total vegetable scores (mean [sd] = 3.6 [1.4] versus 2.3 [1.6], respectively, adjusted p  < .01), higher dairy scores (mean [sd] = 5.6 [3.0] versus 5.0 [3.3], p  = .05) and lower proportion of grocery dollars spent on frozen desserts (1% [.02] versus 3% [.07], respectively, p  = .02).

Conclusions

Lower income households purchase less healthful foods compared with higher income households. Food purchasing patterns may mediate income differences in dietary intake quality.

Trial registration

ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02073643.

Peer Review reports

Low income is associated with a poor quality dietary intake [ 1 , 2 ]. Compared to those with higher income, lower income individuals consume fewer fruits and vegetables, more sugar-sweetened beverages and have lower overall diet quality [ 1 , 2 ].

Household food purchases are important to examine because they provide information about potential mediators of individual dietary intake, and have implications for intervention strategies to improve dietary intake and quality. Individual dietary intake is shaped in part by the household food purchases that create the home food environment [ 3 , 4 ]. Household food purchase receipt collection provides detailed, timely data on the type and cost of foods and beverages flowing into the home environment [ 5 ]. Food purchase receipt data have been used to examine specific food categories of interest, nutrients and overall healthfulness of the home food environment. Low-income households purchase fewer fruits and vegetables, more sugar-sweetened beverages and fewer healthful foods compared with higher income households [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ].

The purpose of the present research was to examine differences in the quality of food purchased by household income level. Data are from an observational study of food shopping practices that included 202 urban households in a large city in the United States [ 15 ]. It was hypothesized that lower income households’ food purchases would be lower in overall nutritional quality, and include fewer fruits and vegetables and more sugar-sweetened beverages compared with higher income households. A unique aspect of the present study was its examination of specific types of foods purchased and overall nutritional quality using the Healthy Eating Index 2010 [ 16 ], and its inclusion of purchases from a variety of food stores, not just traditional grocery stores [ 5 , 6 , 17 ].

Study population and recruitment

The sample was composed of Chicago households enrolled in the Study of Household Purchasing Patterns, Eating, and Recreation [SHOPPER] [ 15 ], a cross-sectional study of behavioral and socioeconomic correlates of food purchasing patterns [ ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02073643]. A convenience sample was recruited from the community between 2014 and 2016 through posted flyers, newspaper advertisements, mailings, craigslist.org , word-of-mouth, and other methods. Interested individuals completed a telephone screening to assess eligibility. Adults who reported making ≥75% of their household’s food purchases were eligible to participate. Exclusion criteria included: 1) non-fluent in English, 2) not living in Chicago, 3) major food allergies or sensitivities, 4) religious/spiritual or medical dietary restrictions that could impact food choice, and 5) living in temporary or group housing or living with a roommate with whom food is shared. Of 347 households screened, 300 (86.5%) met eligibility criteria and 209 (69.7%) enrolled. Five participants were withdrawn from the study because of scheduling conflicts that arose during the 14-d assessment period ( n  = 3) or due to noncompliance with the protocol ( n  = 2). Two additional participants were not included in the analysis reported here because food receipts were not returned to the research team. The final analysis sample included 202 participants. Participants were compensated $100 for completing all four assessments. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. Study procedures were approved by the Rush University Medical Center Institutional Review Board.

Food purchases and receipt collection

Participants were trained by research staff to collected their food purchase receipts and complete annotation procedures throughout the 14-d measurement period. Research staff visited participants’ homes four times during the 14-d measurement period to collect food purchase receipts from participants, with phone calls between to enhance adherence to the food purchase receipt protocol. The receipt data collection protocols are adapted from our previous research studies [ 5 , 7 , 15 , 17 , 18 , 19 ].

The primary household food shopper was trained to collect and annotate food purchase receipts from all household members on a daily basis (even for purchases without a receipt). Annotation sheets were completed by the participant that included the date, time, source and location, payment methods and foods purchased, including item quantity, size, price, and brief description. Color coded stickers were applied by the participant to both the receipt annotation sheet and the food packages. Food packages were saved for research staff to have direct access to the nutrition information. Details about foods without packaging or nutrition labeling (e.g., fresh produce, deli items, bulk nuts/candy) were recorded by researchers during each of the four data collection home visits. Research staff queried participants about any foods purchased that were consumed immediately and therefore had neither receipts nor food packages with nutrition information (e.g., carry-out or restaurant meals). Ready-to-eat foods that could not be accurately characterized (e.g., a buffet meal purchased and consumed by a household member other than the primary shopper) were deemed “non-codable” and were not subjected to nutrient analysis (< 1% of all purchases).

Food purchase nutrient analysis and diet quality

The Nutrition Data System for Research (NDS-R) [ 20 ], was used to compute the nutritional analysis of household food purchases. NDS-R is a database that contains nutrient information for over 18,000 foods and is constantly updated for accuracy and to include newly available foods. The Healthy Eating Index-2010 scoring system [ 16 ] was used to compute the diet quality of the food purchase data once entered into the NDS-R software system. The HEI-2010 scores the nutrient densities (kcal/g, per 1000 kcal) for 12 key dietary components on a continuous scale based on conformity to the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans [ 1 ]. The 12 component scores are summed to obtain a total score with a maximum of 100 points, with higher scores reflecting better overall diet quality. HEI sub-scores examined here included the following: total fruit; whole fruit; total vegetables; greens and beans; whole grains; dairy; total protein foods; seafood and plant proteins; fatty acids; refined grains; sodium; empty calories. The following food groups created by the NDS-R food coding system were also examined as a second method to describe the quality of the household food purchases: 1) fruits; 2) vegetables; 3) sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs); 4) sweet baked items; 5) packaged snack foods; 6) frozen desserts; 7) other desserts; 8) candy. The dollars spent on each food category was divided by the total dollars spent from grocery and other stores (excluding restaurants). Of the 2342 receipts collected, 1349 (57%) were from stores and 993 were from eating out or other sources. Only receipts from food stores were included in the analysis of dollars spent.

Demographic and social variables

The primary shopper self-reported age, gender, ethnicity/race, educational attainment, employment, marital status, household size and composition and household income. The income-to-poverty ratio was calculated by dividing annual household income by the current Federal Poverty Threshold [ 21 ], which accounts for the number of adult and child family members in the household.

Statistical analyses

The analytic sample includes 202 subjects with complete food purchase, diet recall, and sociodemographic data. Analyses were performed using SAS 9.4 (Cary, NC). Descriptive statistics were calculated to characterize the study sample and food purchasing variables. The food purchase variables derived from the receipt data include the HEI-2010 scores and component scores, and dollar amount spent within pre-specified food categories. These values were calculated for all food purchases combined. However, for the dollars spent variables, purchases from restaurant / eating out sources were excluded due to the inability to determine prices for foods and beverages purchased as a combination (e.g., meals including an entrée, side and beverage with a single price). Models were examined using a three-level category of income-to-poverty ratio as the independent variable. Cutpoints were selected based on values previously used for national data [ 21 ]: Low: 0–1.3 ( n  = 49); Medium: 1.4–3.4 ( n  = 78); High: > 3.5 ( n  = 74). High income-to-poverty ratio indicates higher income. Adjusted models were examined that included covariates that might be associated with food spending: education, race and marital status. Unadjusted and adjusted models are shown in the tables below. Results were considered statistically significant where p  < .05.

Descriptive variables by income

Participants in the sample were primarily female, with a varied distribution on household size, children in the household, education, race, marital status and other variables (Table 1 ). Significant differences by income were observed for most demographic and household variables. Those with lower income were less likely to be married, had larger household size, were more likely to have obesity, be African American, have a high school education or less, not be employed full time, and be currently enrolled in SNAP.

Nutrition quality of food purchases

Nutrition quality of food purchases by income is shown in Table 2 . Healthy Eating Index 2010 scores were significantly associated with income in both unadjusted ( p  < .0001) and adjusted ( p  = .05) analyses. In post hoc comparisons, HEI total scores were significantly lower among low-income compared with high-income households ( p  = .03, in adjusted analyses). No significant differences were observed between low- and medium-income households after adjustment for education, marital status and race ( p  = .58).

In unadjusted analyses, most HEI sub-scores significantly differed by income group, and the pattern was that lower-income households had lower (poorer nutrition quality) scores compared with higher-income households. In analyses adjusted for education, marital status and race, there were significant differences by household income for vegetables ( p  = 0.01) and dairy ( p  = 0.05). In both cases, lower income households scored lower than higher income households. No significant differences were observed between lower and middle income household on HEI subscores.

Proportion of grocery dollars spent

Total dollars spent at grocery and other food stores by income level is shown in Table 3 . A positive significant association was observed between income category and dollars spent at grocery and other food stores ( p  < .01). In unadjusted analyses, lower-income households spent a significantly smaller percent of their grocery dollars on fruit ( p  < .003) and vegetables ( p  < .001), and a significantly higher percent of their grocery dollars on sugar sweetened beverages ( p  < .004) and frozen desserts ( p  < .01), compared with higher income households. No significant differences were observed for percent grocery dollars spent for packaged snacks, sweet baked items, other desserts, and candy. The proportion of beverage grocery dollars spent on SSBs was higher among lower income households compared with higher income households ( p  < .0001). In analyses adjusted for education, race and marital status, compared to lower income households, higher income households spent a significantly lower percent of grocery dollars on frozen desserts ( p  = .02). No other income differences were significant after adjustment for education, race and marital status.

Household food purchases are important to examine because they may influence dietary intake quality, and are important potential intervention targets. In the present study, the overall nutritional quality of foods and beverages purchased was significantly lower among lower income households compared with higher income households. This remained significant with adjustment for education level, a strong correlate of both household income and diet quality. The specific food purchase categories that were associated with income were vegetables and dairy (HEI subscores) and frozen desserts (NDS-R food category). Vegetable purchases coded into the HEI subcategories were significantly positively associated with higher income-to-poverty ratio, and were marginally associated with purchases measured by NDS-R food categories coding. Dairy purchases, captured by the HEI subcategories, and frozen desserts, captured by the NDS-R food categories, significantly differed by income-to-poverty ratio.

The results of the present study are consistent with existing data regarding the association between income level and the nutritional quality of foods and beverages purchased [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Food purchase data show that lower-income households purchase less healthful foods overall, fewer fruits and vegetables and more sugary beverages compared to households with higher income [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. The most recent comprehensive analysis of food purchase patterns from a nationally representative sample of 4826 US households showed that food purchase patterns among households of all income levels are lower in dietary quality than recommended [ 4 ]. However, households that were participating in the federal food assistance program (called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) purchased lower quality foods compared to households of comparable income that were not participating, and households with higher income. Overall Healthy Eating Index scores, fruits, vegetables and whole grains were significantly lower and empty calories significantly higher, among low-income households enrolled in SNAP compared with low-income households not enrolled in SNAP and higher income households [ 4 ]. In another study, an analysis of 24,879 household food purchase receipts showed that food purchases by lower-income households were less healthful and included fewer fruits and vegetables than recommended, according to a standardized nutrient profile [ 11 ]. In another study of 90 households with children, compared with higher income households, lower income households spent fewer dollars on fruits and vegetables and sweets and snacks, but spent a larger proportion of beverage dollars on sugary beverages [ 7 ]. A study of 1003 households that used face to face interviews found that lower income households reported purchasing fewer fruits, vegetables and fiber, and more sugary foods, compared with higher income households [ 9 , 10 ]. In a study that used in-store shoppers’ purchase data, results showed that lower-income household purchases were lower in dietary quality per 1000 kcals purchased compared with higher income households’ food purchases [ 8 ].

These findings further establish the link between income and the quality of the foods and beverages purchased by households. If diet quality is lower among lower-income groups, then food purchases may be a key intervention target. The present study indicates that lower income households are less likely to purchase recommended healthful foods such as vegetables, and spend a larger proportion of their grocery money on less healthful foods such as frozen desserts. Food assistance programs could help promote healthier food purchases through specific program guidelines, such as incentivizing the purchase of fruits and vegetables, or restricting the purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages or sweet baked goods [ 19 , 22 ]. These strategies have been shown to be effective in changing low-income households’ food purchases in community-based randomized trials [ 18 , 19 , 22 ].

The present study was limited in its ability to separately examine income and education in relationship to food purchasing behavior. Income and education are closely intertwined, and may have independent or synergistic effects on food purchasing behaviors. It is noteworthy that many of the observed associations between income and food purchasing variables were substantially attenuated when adjusting for other socioeconomic variables such as education and race. The independent effects of education and income on food purchases warrants closer study, since intervention strategies may be differentially effective, depending on the answers to these questions.

The use of receipts to measure household food purchases has methodological limitations, including lack of information about the completeness of the receipts to represent all food purchases during the time interval covered [ 5 , 7 , 23 ]. No objective measure exists of the true total number of receipts that participants should turn in to the research staff. Thus, it is not known whether participants turned in 100, 50% or some other portion of their total food purchase receipts. It is possible that participants may have omitted receipts for small purchases such as a single drink or candy item [ 5 , 7 ]. By contrast, a strength of the receipt data is its potentially lower reactivity than self-report assessments. It is an objective measure of food purchases, does not rely on participant memory, and may be less affected by social desirability responding. The enrolled sample was comprised of volunteers, and this could affect the generalizability of the results reported here.

Lower quality food purchasing among lower-income households may be due to higher food prices for higher quality foods [ 3 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]. Even within lower-income households, higher quality food purchases are associated with spending more money on those particular food categories [ 3 , 24 ]. Household configuration and the presence and number of children, and employment-related variables, including number of jobs and hours worked, may also influence the quality of foods and beverages purchased. Future research should examine the influence of these variables on the quality of household food and beverage purchases using large cohorts that will enable adequately powered analysis of these demographic and household variables.

Lower income households purchase foods of lower nutritional quality compared to higher income households. Lower nutritional quality of foods purchased could contribute to the lower diet quality observed among lower income individuals. Further research is needed to understand how the nutritional quality of foods purchased can be improved on a limited income.

Abbreviations

Healthy Eating Index

Sugar sweetened beverages

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy people 2020, 2 nd ed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. https://www.healthypeople.gov Accessed 19 Feb 2019.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, Office of Research, Nutrition and Analysis. Diet Quality of Americans by Food Stamp Participation Status: Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999–2004, by Nancy Cole and Mary Kay Fox. Project Officer: Jenny Laster Genser, Alexandria, VA: 2008. https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/NHANES-FSP.pdf Accessed 5 Feb 2018.

Frazão E, Andrews MS, Smallwood D, Prell MA. 2007. Food spending patterns of low-income households: will increasing purchasing power result in healthier food choices? (economic information bulletin number 29-4). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, economic research service. https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/59430/2/eib29-4.pdf Accessed 5 Feb 2018.

Mancino L, Guthrie J, Ver Ploeg M, Lin, B-H. 2018 Nutritional quality of foods acquired by Americans: Findings from USDA’s National Household Food Acquisition and purchase survey. Washington DC: United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, bulletin number 188. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/87531/eib-188.pdf?utm Accessed 25 Sept 2018.

French SA, Wall M, Mitchell NR, Shimotsu ST, Welsh E. Annotated receipts capture household food purchases from a broad range of sources. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act 2009;6:37. PMCID: PMC2714491.

Blisard WN, Stewart H. 2006. How low-income households allocate their food budget relative to the cost of the thrifty food plan. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, economic research service. http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/7239/2/er060020.pdf Accessed 5 Feb 2018.

French SA, Wall M, Mitchell NR. Household income differences in food sources and food items purchased. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act 2010;7:77. PMCID: PMC2988056.

Pechey R, Monsivais P. Socioeconomic inequalities in the healthfulness of food choices: exploring the contributions of food expenditures. Prev Med 2016;88:203–209. PMCID: PMC4910945.

Appelhans BM, Milliron BJ, Woolf K, Johnson TJ, Pagoto SL, Schneider KL, Whited MC, Ventrelle JC. Socioeconomic status, energy cost, and nutrient content of supermarket food purchases. Am J Prev Med 2012;42:398–402. PMCID: PMC3858078.

Turrell G, Hewitt B, Patterson C, Oldenburg B, Gould T. Socioeconomic differences in food purchasing behavior and suggested implications for diet-related health promotion. J Hum Nutr Diet. 2002;15(5):355–64.

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Turrell G, Kavanagh AM. Socio-economic pathways to diet: modelling the association between socio-economic position and food purchasing behaviour. Public Health Nutr. 2006;9(3):375–83.

Article   Google Scholar  

Pechey R, Monsivais P. Supermarket choice, shopping behavior, socioeconomic status, and food purchases Am J Prev Med 2015;49(6):868–877. PMCID: PMC4651322.

Pechey R, Jebb SA, Kelly MP, Almiron-Roig E, Conde S, Nakamura R, Shemilt I, Suhrcke M, Marteau TM. Socioeconomic differences in purchases of more vs. less healthy foods and beverages: analysis of over 25,000 British households in 2010. Soc Sci Med 2013;92:22–26. PMCID: PMC3726935.

Andreyeva T, Luedicke J, Henderson KE, Tripp AS. Grocery store beverage choices by participants in federal food assistance and nutrition programs. Am J Prev Med. 2012;43(4):411–8.

Appelhans BM, French SA, Tangney CC, Powell LM, Wang Y. To what extent to purchases reflect shoppers' diet quality and nutrient intake? IJBNPA. 2017;14:46.

PubMed   Google Scholar  

Guenther PM, Kirkpatrick SI, Reedy J, Krebs-Smith SM, Buckman DW, Dodd KW, Casavale KO, Carroll RJ. The healthy eating Index-2010 is a valid and reliable measure of diet quality according to the 2010 dietary guidelines for Americans. J Nutr. 2014;144:399–407.

French SA, Gerlach AF, Mitchell NR, Hannan PJ, Welsh EM. Household obesity prevention: take action-a group randomized trial. Obesity. 2011;19(10):2082–8.

French SA, Harnack L, Rydell S, Mitchell NR, Oakes MJ. Financial incentives and purchase restrictions in a food benefit program affect the types of foods and beverages purchased: Results from a randomized trial. IJBNPA. 2017;14:127. https://doi.org/10.1186/S12966-017-0585-9 .

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Harnack L, Oakes JM, Elbel B, Beatty T, Rydell S, French SA. Do SNAP prohibitions and subsidies improve nutrition? A randomized trial. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(11):1610–18. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5633 .

Nutrition Data System for Research. University of Minnesota Nutrition Coordinating Center. http://www.ncc.umn.edu/ndsr-database-page . Accessed 5 Feb 2018.

Wang DD, Leung CW, Li Y, Chiuve SE, Hu FB, Willett WC. Trends in dietary quality among adults in the United States 1999 through 2010. JAMA Intern Med. 2014;174(10):1587–95.

Bartlett S, Klerman J, Olsho L, et al. Evaluation of the Healthy Incentive Pilot (HIP): Final Report. USDA. Washington: 2014. Accessed 19 Feb 2019. https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/ops/HIP-Final.pdf

French SA, Shimotsu ST, Wall M, Gerlach A. Capturing the spectrum of household food and beverage purchasing behavior: a review. J Am Diet Assoc. 2008;108(2):2051–8.

Marty L, Dubois C, Gaubard MS, Maidon A, Lesturgeon A, Gaigi H, Darmon N. Higher nutritional quality at no additional cost among low-income households: insights from food purchases of “positive deviants”. Am J Clin Nutr. 2015;102(1):190–8.

Drewnowski A, Specter SE. Poverty and obesity: the role of energy density and costs. Am J Clin Nutr. 2004;79(1):6–16.

Download references

Acknowledgements

Not Applicable.

Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health NHLBI/NIH award number R01HL117804. The funder did not participate in the study design, data collection, analysis or interpretation, or writing of the publication.

Availability of data and materials

Data are available from the authors upon request.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, 1300 South Second Street, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN, 55454, USA

Simone A. French

Department of Clinical Nutrition, College of Health Sciences, Rush University Medical Center, 600 Paulina Street, Room 716, Chicago, IL, 60612, USA

Christy C. Tangney

Department of Preventive Medicine, Rush University Medical Center, 1700 W Van Buren Street, Suite 470, Chicago, IL, 60612, USA

Melissa M. Crane & Bradley M. Appelhans

Department of Internal Medicine, Rush University Medical Center, 1645 W. Jackson, Suite 675, Chicago, IL, 60612, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

Each of the listed authors (SAF, CCT, MMC, YW, BMA) has contributed to the conception and design of the study; the interpretation of the data; drafting and critically revising the manuscript for important intellectual content; and provided final approval for the version; and agrees to take public responsibility for its content; and agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work related to its accuracy and integrity.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Simone A. French .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The Rush University IRB approved the study. All participants consented in writing to participate at the time of study enrollment.

Consent for publication

Competing interests.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

French, S.A., Tangney, C.C., Crane, M.M. et al. Nutrition quality of food purchases varies by household income: the SHoPPER study. BMC Public Health 19 , 231 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6546-2

Download citation

Received : 16 March 2018

Accepted : 14 February 2019

Published : 26 February 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6546-2

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Food purchases
• Household income
• Nutritional quality
• Dietary intake

BMC Public Health

ISSN: 1471-2458

• Submission enquiries: [email protected]
• General enquiries: [email protected]

• Research Note
• Open access
• Published: 14 May 2024

How effective is nutrition training for staff running after school programs in improving quality of food purchased and meal practices? A program evaluation

• Cecilie Beinert 1 ,
• Margrethe Røed 1 &
• Frøydis N. Vik 1  

BMC Research Notes volume  17 , Article number:  136 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

35 Accesses

Metrics details

Objectives / purpose

After school programs represents a setting for promoting healthy dietary habits. The aim of this study was to evaluate how effective the after school program staff perceived nutrition training aiming to improve quality of food purchased and meal practices. We further aimed to assess the changes in purchase of primarily fish and fish products, whole grains and fruit and vegetables, by collecting receipts from food purchase before and after the intervention.

This is a mixed methods study. Group interviews with after school staff were carried out and the data was analyzed deductively according to the RE-AIM framework. Receipts from food purchase were collected. Findings from the qualitative interviews indicated that the intervention had been a positive experience for the staff and suggested a new way of working with promoting healthy foods in after school program units. Although there were some challenges reported, the staff made necessary adjustments to make the changes possible to sustain over time. Findings from the receipts support the changes reported by the staff. These showed increased purchase of vegetables, fish, and whole grain in all four after school program units. After school programs in similar settings may expand on these findings to improve the students’ dietary habits.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Investing in young children’s health, education, and development are fundamental for the individual’s lifelong health and development [ 1 ]. An unhealthy diet during childhood tends to track into adulthood [ 2 ] and increases the risk of childhood obesity [ 3 ] and non-communicable diseases later in life [ 4 ]. Developing healthy eating habits in childhood is therefore essential to maintain good health throughout life [ 5 ].

In Norway, the diet of children and adolescents (age 9 and 13) are mostly in line with national dietary guidelines, however, they still consume too much saturated fat and added sugar and too little fruit, vegetables and fish [ 6 ]. Parents play an important role in establishing healthy eating habits in their children, but arenas where children spend a considerable amount of their time and consume meals on a regular basis also influence eating habits. Schools and afterschool programs (ASPs), both represent areas of health promotion opportunities, as they amongst others, shall facilitate daily mealtimes that give the students a basis for developing enjoyment of food, a sense of community and good health habits [ 7 ]. Although the national guidance for ASPs is clear that they shall ensure the food served is in accordance with national dietary guidelines, previous investigations show this may not always be the case [ 8 , 9 ], although the evidence base regarding foods served in ASPs in Norway is scarce. Every ASP has one leader and several members of staff. There are also no formal competence requirements for staff working in ASPs in Norway [ 10 ]. In 2021, 6 out of 10 students attended ASPs and it is most common for students in first grade (83%), with descending numbers up to fourth grade (30%) [ 11 ]. In 2022, the Norwegian government introduced up to 12 h per week free ASP for all first graders, resulting in an increase of participants from 83 to 92% [ 12 ]. As of August 1st, 2023, the government further introduced a 12 h per week free of charge ASP for second grade [ 13 ].

The intervention

A non-profit foundation, Geitmyra Culinary Center for Children (from now on Geitmyra), has developed an intervention; a nutrition training, to enhance the competence of those working with food in ASPs, aiming to improve the quality of foods and meal practice within the setting and context of the ASP. Examples of context may be time available for preparing meals, amount of money allocated to food purchases, and if the kitchen facilities allow for preparing of different dishes).

The intervention was carried out in autumn 2022. The staff at the ASPs were to serve food in accordance with national dietary guidelines, implementing changes over time, and maintain the dietary changes over time. The schools were public and recruited through the municipality and they volunteered to serve as pilot schools to inform a scale up to include the whole municipality.

The intervention lasted for five months consisting of different components, e.g. initial meetings, menu planning and cooking courses and a “food celebration”. See Table  1 for details.

Considering Norwegian student’s non-optimal diet and the need to increase ASP staff’s competence in preparing healthy meals served to students, our research questions were:

How effective did the ASP staff perceive the nutrition training to be?

How effective was the nutrition training targeting ASP staff in improving quality of foods purchased?

The aim of this study was to evaluate how effective the ASP staff perceived nutrition training aiming to improve quality of food purchased and meal practices. Further, to assess the changes in purchase of primarily fish and fish products, whole grains and fruit and vegetables, by collecting receipts from ASPs food purchases before and after the intervention.

Methods and materials

Study design.

To answer research question 1, the process evaluation, a qualitative study was conducted. Semi-structured group interviews were chosen as the data collection method because it gives comparable, reliable data and the flexibility to ask follow-up questions to clarify answers [ 14 ].

To answer research question 2, the outcome evaluation, a before and after comparison of quantitative data; foods purchased by ASPs were used. This was to test the data collection method, not powered to detect statistically significant change.

Sample and procedure

Process evaluation: All ASP leaders from the participating ASPs were invited to take part in a digital group interview. There were four participants, all female and they agreed to participate by written consent. It lasted for 55 min. A semi-structured interview guide [ 15 ] exploring general experiences of the nutrition training was developed in addition to possible barriers and facilitators to implementation of the knowledge and skills. One ASP staff member (female) was interviewed individually, via zoom due to convenience and it lasted for 43 min. We were unable to recruit more participants among ASP staff. All interviews were conducted by two research staff, a research scientist (MR) and a master’s student (KDB), both of whom were women and teachers of food and health in a University in Southern Norway. Interviews were audio-recorded with consent from participants. Receipts of food purchases (objective measures) for all four ASP units were collected from January to May in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Data analysis – process evaluation

Interviews were transcribed verbatim (KDB). The transcripts were uploaded to NVivo 12 Pro. Data were analysed deductively to reflect participants perceptions of program impact as it related to the components of the RE-AIM framework. The RE-AIM framework was chosen to structure presentation of the process evaluation data because of its long history and broad utility [ 16 , 17 ]. RE-AIM is a framework to guide the planning and evaluation of programs or interventions and involves assessment of program impact against five domains: Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance. Recordings were listened to several times by the lead researcher (CB) and data coded under the headings of the RE-AIM framework. Two other research members (FNV, MR) familiarized themselves with the material to check for similarities and differences between the researchers. Discrepancies were resolved through discussions.

Data analysis - outcome evaluation

Grams per student per month were calculated from receipts for different food groups at both time points using Excel. Numbers from pure fish and fish products, whole grains, fruit, and vegetables are highlighted as these are of special interest because they were targeted in the intervention.

Process evaluation – research question 1

All ASP staff were invited to participate, and it was up to the individual ASP-leader to decide how many of their staff participated in the nutrition training. In total, 23 participated in the inspirational course (all four ASP leaders and 19 ASP staff in total from all four schools).

Effectiveness

A re-occurring feedback was that the intervention was a positive experience and that the intervention had provided them with valuable input. They reported changes in the way the meals are organized and that they included more vegetables. Instead of offering alternative dishes like bread with optional spread if students did not want the meal offered, they now offered cut vegetables or a single piece of bread as side dish to the meals prepared, to stimulate the students to try what’s offered; “we have stopped always substituting with crispbread. But when serving soup, we either make crisp bread or they get a slice of whole grain bread. By that, we also learned that they don’t need so much, they get something. And you see that when they don’t get anything else, they try it instead” (ASP leader 1).

A small group of the older students in the ASP were also trained during the intervention and helped select, prepare, and serve the meals, which was helpful to the employees who now experienced having more time for the students.

The interviewees discussed how the intervention had been a positive experience. The recipes were possible to carry out with the facilities available. The dialogue with Geitmyra during the intervention had been positive and helpful. Still, a few challenges were reported. One school reported a challenge related to recruiting the older students to help prepare or serve the meal, due to few students in this age group and that most of them wanted to play or do other things. Challenges with left-over food were also reported by several, as the students did not like all the dishes that were served or that the portion sizes were too large. The staff worked hard to avoid food waste, by adjusting the portions sizes. They also replaced recipes with those the students liked, giving leftovers to the teachers in school, and storing the food and using it the day after, or later that day. As one ASP leader expressed “We are fortunate to always have teachers who are hungry in the afternoon, so we usually get rid of the food …. The last time we had lentil soup, I heated it up and put it out when the parents came to pick them up. So, they got to taste it, but we, I also struggle making… its still a bit… too much, so we get a bit of leftovers” (ASP leader 3).

Implementation

The interviewees expressed how they adjusted the intervention to make it sustain over time. This was partly related to barriers like time and personnel “… we make it happen, but not to the extent that we did perhaps when Geitmyra was there with two extra adults… ” (ASP leader 2). One leader expressed how they used extra ovens in the school kitchen for preparing large quantities of crispbread for instance. Another ASP leader said they took the older students, who helped prepare the food, out of class a bit earlier, so they got enough time to prepare everything. Some also expressed how they skipped recipes their students did not like, instead of reintroducing it for repeated exposure. Some also adjusted the recipes to what the students preferred, by e.g., reducing the number of spices or by exchanging ingredients. There were no issues reported regarding economy related to purchase of food or equipment.

Maintenance

During the interviews, all agreed that they now had the tools needed to sustain these changes over time. As one ASP leader expressed, “ I really feel we got everything we need and more to continue ” (ASP leader 4). The ASP staff member expressed how she believed they would manage to continue, but that this required sustained initiative from their ASP leader. Post-intervention, the interviewees expressed how they had changed their practice.

Outcome evaluation – research question 2

Food purchases before and after the nutrition training were compared. In all four ASP-units there was an increase in the purchase of vegetables, pure fish, and whole grains (Table  2 ). The purchase of fruit decreased in two units and increased in the other two units. For results on other food groups relevant regarding dietary guidelines, see appendix 1 .

This study aimed to investigate if nutrition training was effective in improving the skills and knowledge among ASPs staff and if this may lead to changes in food purchase in line with national dietary guidelines, which could improve the diet of students in ASPs. All four ASP units; 23 participants, did the nutrition training, which is considered decent, because ASP staff also needed to be with the students, and some were absent from work (reach).

Findings from the interviews indicated that the intervention had been a successful way of working with promoting healthy nutrition in ASPs (effectiveness). Although the staff met some challenges (adoption) and made some adjustments (implementation) to the intervention, they reported on changes made regarding student involvement and what they are serving. The ASP staff (including the leaders) reported being confident in continuing with the changes they had made, which may indicate a higher confidence and competence in their work regarding mealtimes (maintenance). Although there were challenges met regarding time and facilities, the staff made necessary adjustments to make it work.

The changes reported by the ASP staff and leaders were supported by the receipts collected pre- and post-interventions. For two ASPs, fruit purchase went down after the intervention. The ASP leader at school 1 said they had almost stopped serving fruit, and only served vegetables after the intervention, and school 4 mentioned how they had begun serving vegetables to all meals. This might explain the drop in fruit purchase at school 1 and the large rise in vegetable purchases at school 4. When assessing fruit and vegetables combined, this increased in all schools.

Mozaffarian et al. evaluated an organizational intervention in after school programs in the US, to improve snack and beverage quality [ 18 ]. They found significant improvements with respect to increasing servings of fresh fruits and vegetables [ 18 ] in line with our study regarding vegetables, and partly for fruits. They did not find increased servings of whole grains as we did in our study. Since this study evaluated private ASPs in the US, we cannot assume that settings and context are similar to our Norwegian study. To our knowledge, there are sparse literature available in a Nordic context for interventions targeting nutrition among ASP staff. Our findings from this study may support implementation of a more comprehensive training program in Norway and may also inform after school programs in a Nordic setting.

This study found that nutrition training with close follow-up over time may be an effective way of creating change in food and meal practices in ASPs. There are large societal benefits to be made if youth in Norway adhere to dietary guidelines, such as prevention of non-communicable diseases and economic benefits [ 19 ] and investing in child health will, therefore, yield long term benefits [ 1 , 2 , 4 ]. Although there are dietary guidelines on food offered in ASPs in Norway, these must also be followed by the individual units, which may not always be the case [ 8 , 9 ].

Findings from this program evaluation of nutrition training showed that it was effective in improving skills and knowledge among after school program staff. Receipts from food purchases before and after the intervention revealed an increase in purchase of vegetables, pure fish, and whole grain products.

Limitations

Although all four ASP leaders agreed to participate in group interviews, the number of ASP units was small, and we were only able to interview one ASP staff. More participants would have made it possible to assess effectiveness to a larger degree. No control group was included, and we cannot rule out that changes in food purchases could be explained by other factors besides the intervention. Also, there is no long-term follow-up of the participants. Strengths include purchasing data (receipts) collected over a period of five months before and after the staff training, which are objective data showing change. The fact that the receipts were collected the same five months (January to May) the two consecutive years, limits season variation in food purchase and strengthen comparison. Strengths are also in applying mixed methods.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

• After school program

Geitmyra Culinary Center for Children

Clark H, Coll-Seck AM, Banerjee A, Peterson S, Dalglish SL, Ameratunga S et al. A future for the world’s children? A WHO–UNICEF–Lancet Commission. Lancet. 2020 Feb 22 [cited 2020 Jul 30];395(10224):605–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(19)32540-1

Mitchell GL, Farrow C, Haycraft E, Meyer C. Parental influences on children’s eating behaviour and characteristics of successful parent-focussed interventions. Appetite. 2013;60(1):85–94.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

World Health Organization. Report of the commission on ending childhood obesity. Geneva. 2016 [cited 2023 Sep 19]. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/204176

World Health Organization. Global action plan for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases 2013–2020. 2013 [cited 2020 Jul 28]. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/94384/9789241506236_eng.pdf

Schwarzenberg SJ, Georgieff MK. Advocacy for improving nutrition in the first 1000 days to support childhood development and adult health. Pediatrics. 2018;141(2).

Hansen Brooke L, Myhre Borch J, Johannesen Wetting AM, Paulsen Mohn M, Andersen Frost L. UNGKOST 3 Nationwide dietary survey among students in 4th and 8th grade in Norway, 2015. (In Norwegian). Oslo; 2016 [cited 2019 May 27]. https://www.fhi.no/globalassets/dokumenterfiler/rapporter/2017/ungkost-3-rapport-blant-9-og-13-aringer_endeligversjon-12-01-17.pdf

Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training. Framework plan for SFO. 2021. https://www.udir.no/contentassets/ae8e58012cc94e04b0a767c9cea88e67/rammeplan-sfo-engelsk.pdf

the Norwegian Consumer Council. Food in after-school-hours care. Nutrition for life, play and learning (In Norwegian) [Internet]. 2018. https://storage02.forbrukerradet.no/media/2018/09/20180822-ke-appetitt-pa-livet-sfo-rapport.pdf

Norwegian Directorate of Health. Food and meals in after-school-hours care managers. A qualitative nationwide survey among after-school-hours care managers (In Norwegian). 2013. https://www.helsedirektoratet.no/rapporter/mat-og-maltider-i-skolen-og-skolefritidsordningen-undersokelser/Mat og måltider i skolefritidsordningen – En kvantitativ landsdekkende undersøkelse blant ledere av skolefritidsordningen.pdf/_/attachment/inline/8c.

Utdanningsforbundet. Use of assistants in primary school (In Norwegian) [Internet]. 2023. https://utdanning.no/yrker/beskrivelse/skoleassistent#:~:text=Det kreves ingen formell utdanning for å arbeide som skoleassistent.

Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training. The Norwegian Education Mirror 2022. 2023. pp. 37–40. https://www.udir.no/in-english/the-education-mirror-2022/compulsory-education2/out-of-school-care-abbreviated-as-sfo-in-norwegian/

Ministry of Education and Research. 60 000 students get cheaper after school program and 7 000 children get free Kindergarten (In Norwegian). 2023. https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/60-000-elever-far-billigere-sfo-og-7000-barn-far-gratis-barnehage/id2984316/

Lovdata. Regulations for the Education Act Chap. 1B. The after-school program (In Norwegian). § 1B-4 Free after-school program for students in 1st and 2nd year Norway. 2023. https://lovdata.no/dokument/SF/forskrift/2006-06-23-724/KAPITTEL_3#§1b-4

Malterud K. Qualitative research methods for medicine and health sciences (in Norwegian). 4th ed. Universitetsforlaget; 2017. p. 256.

Merriam SB. Qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; 2009. p. 304.

Google Scholar  

Shaw RB, Sweet SN, McBride CB, Adair WK, Martin Ginis KA. Operationalizing the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, maintenance (RE-AIM) framework to evaluate the collective impact of autonomous community programs that promote health and well-being. BMC Public Health. 2019;19(1):1–14.

Article   Google Scholar  

Glasgow RE, Vogt TM, Boles SM. Evaluating the public health impact of health promotion interventions: the RE-AIM framework. Am J Public Health. 1999 Oct 7 [cited 2024 Apr 25];89(9):1322–7. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.89.9.1322

Mozaffarian RS, Wiecha JL, Roth BA, Nelson TF, Lee RM, Gortmaker SL. Impact of an Organizational Intervention Designed to Improve Snack and Beverage Quality in YMCA After-School Programs. Am J Public Health. 2010 May 1 [cited 2024 Apr 25];100(5):925. /pmc/articles/PMC2853616/

Sælensminde K, Johansson L, Helleve A. Societals gains of adeherence to dietary guidelines (In Norwegian). Oslo; 2016 [cited 2019 Dec 18]. https://www.helsedirektoratet.no/rapporter/samfunnsgevinster-av-a-folge-helsedirektoratets-kostrad/

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the participants at each ASP unit and the staff at Geitmyra Culinary Center for Children. We also want to thank the master’s student (KDB) that participated in the interviews and transcribed verbatim.

This study is funded by Sparebankstiftelsen, Kompetansefondet and the University of Agder. The financial contributors were not involved in designing the study, data collection, analyses, interpretation of data or in writing the manuscript.

Open access funding provided by University of Agder

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Nutrition and Public Health, University of Agder, Postboks 422, Kristiansand, 4604, Norway

Cecilie Beinert, Margrethe Røed & Frøydis N. Vik

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

CB, FNV and MR initiated and designed the study. CB, FNV and MR initiated and drafted the first version of the manuscript. MR performed the interviews. CB analyzed the interviews and MR and FNV interpreted them together with CB. All authors contributed to, read, and approved the final version of this manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Frøydis N. Vik .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The study was approved by Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (ref. 231769) and by the faculty ethics committee and has been conducted in line with the Helsinki Declaration of 1985, revised in 2008. The study was voluntary, and written informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary Material 1

: Appendix 1 Food purchase in grams per student per month

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Beinert, C., Røed, M. & Vik, F.N. How effective is nutrition training for staff running after school programs in improving quality of food purchased and meal practices? A program evaluation. BMC Res Notes 17 , 136 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-024-06798-5

Download citation

Received : 14 November 2023

Accepted : 07 May 2024

Published : 14 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-024-06798-5

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Nutrition training
• Intervention

BMC Research Notes

ISSN: 1756-0500

• Submission enquiries: [email protected]
• General enquiries: [email protected]

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• JMIR Mhealth Uhealth
• v.8(3); 2020 Mar

Promoting Healthy Eating Habits for College Students Through Creating Dietary Diaries via a Smartphone App and Social Media Interaction: Online Survey Study

Masako watanabe-ito.

1 Department of Public Health Nursing, School of Nursing, Toho University, Ota, Tokyo, Japan

Emiko Kishi

Yoko shimizu.

2 Department of Community Nursing, School of Nursing, Tokyo Women's Medical University, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan

Youth in developed countries face the contradictory health problems of obesity and an excessive desire for weight loss. Developing a better health attitude for college students is essential as this period of life establishes future lifestyle and habits. Online interaction on social media can help to improve eating habits by creating dietary diaries through a smartphone app; however, the effects of such interactions for college students have not been examined to date.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential effectiveness of social media interactions with the use of dietary diaries on a smartphone app to motivate college students in raising self-awareness of their eating habits.

Forty-two college students in the greater Tokyo area of Japan participated in the study by creating dietary diaries online through a smartphone app and then followed/interacted with each other using social media for 7 consecutive days in September to November 2017. Online surveys were administered at baseline, immediately after creating the dietary diaries, and at 1-month follow up. Participants rated their degree of interest and self-evaluation of eating habits using 7-point scales, and answered multiple choice questions related to their thoughts in choosing meals/drinks among 10 topics. Free descriptions about their overall experience throughout the project were also collected in the follow-up survey.

Data from 38 participants who completed all processes were analyzed. Over time, the mean score for degree of interest in eating habits increased from 4.6 to 6.2 ( P <.001), while the self-evaluation score decreased from 4.5 to 3.6 ( P <.001); these significant differences remained after 1 month (5.3, P =.002; 4.1, P =0.04, respectively). A weak negative correlation ( P =.009) was observed between scores for degree of interest and self-evaluation. Participants with lower scores for degree of interest at baseline tended to increase their interest level by more than 2 points above the average ( P <.001). Participants gradually thought more about their eating habits from various perspectives when choosing a meal/drink, particularly with respect to maintaining well-balanced diets and introducing diverse ingredients. Participants evaluated their experiences as interesting/fun and reported familiarity with using the smartphone app and social media as the preferred method to keep track of their eating. All participants welcomed communication with fellow participants on social media and motivated each other, in addition to monitoring their eating habits through online dietary diaries. Some participants experienced difficulty, especially when they were busy or faced a lack of internet access.

Conclusions

Through interactions on social media, college students experienced encouragement and developed an interest and critical thinking with respect to their eating habits. This approach, which embraces peer education and peer support with social media, holds promise for the future of youth health promotion. Further examination will be needed to explore how to sustain this level of heightened awareness.

Introduction

In the last three decades, lifestyle-related health problems among youth in developed countries have become increasingly complicated given a simultaneous rise in the incidence of obesity and diabetes [ 1 - 3 ] with an excessive desire to lose weight by adopting unbalanced diets [ 4 ]. Among youth, college students are a particularly harder group to reach owing to their busy lives taken up by newly available activities associated with college life. Previous studies reported that although college students have adequate nutritional knowledge, their eating behavior is not necessarily healthy because they cannot recognize direct links between eating habits and health [ 5 - 8 ]. Therefore, it is essential to promote healthier eating habits among college students because lifestyles are established during this critical period, which have a significant impact on their future health.

Health education for college students requires new approaches that view young people as managers of their own eating habits rather than as recipients of health information. In Japan, 98.7% of people in their 20s use the internet, 88.7% own smartphones, and 78.5% use social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter to communicate with each other and obtain information [ 9 ]. The World Health Organization also supports the potential of mobile health, which uses mobile and wireless technologies to support the achievement of health objectives, especially for motivating young people to acquire healthy behaviors [ 10 ]. Over the past 15 years, many researchers have adopted smartphone apps for health care such as for supporting behavioral management required during mental health care [ 11 ] and for self-monitoring in managing long-term conditions [ 12 ].

Since the 1980s, paper-based approaches such as food frequency questionnaires [ 13 - 15 ] and single or multiple daily recalls [ 16 - 18 ] have been conventionally applied for dietary assessment. Although these are cost-effective methods, some researchers noted that they are time consuming and rely on participants’ memory and literacy, which can lead to higher rates of underreporting [ 19 , 20 ]. Since 1995, the use of innovative technologies has been shown to improve dietary assessment in various research settings. Research related to the use of dietary diaries with computer-based technologies has been conducted in both personal and interactive situations, demonstrating that data can be collected at a time that is convenient for participants [ 21 , 22 ]. Personal digital assistant technologies provide dietary diaries with a portion size measurement aid to enable participants to easily record their food [ 23 , 24 ], and mobile phone/smartphone-based technologies further enrich the data with the addition of digital photos and voice recording, as well as allowing easier registration regardless of location and time [ 25 - 27 ]. Illner et al [ 28 ] conducted a systematic review of the innovative technologies available for dietary diaries, demonstrating that dietary diaries that utilize technology have the potential to be more cost- and time-effective, and utilize less laborious means of data correction.

Public health research has expanded in recent years to explore methods that best promote a healthy diet and the adoption of information and communication technology, including a randomized controlled trial on the typical health specialist-patient relationship [ 29 ]. Research to promote college students’ eating habits demonstrated that interventions employing information and communication technology can be effective [ 30 - 35 ], and some researchers adopted smartphones and personal digital assistants as assessment tools [ 36 - 38 ]. However, to date, few studies have examined the effects of online peer communication among participants monitoring their eating habits. Watanabe et al [ 39 ] investigated how college students interacted with each other through dietary diaries via an internet weblog that was accessed on flip-style phones; this approach was sufficiently familiar to enable participants to discover new challenges in their eating habits [ 39 ]. Turner-Mcgrievy and Tate [ 40 ] reported the effect of a weight loss program among adults using social media via smartphones. However, the effects of online interaction on social media by creating dietary diaries through a smartphone app to improve college students’ eating habits have not yet been examined.

Our research explores how interactions through social media and creating dietary diaries with a smartphone app motivate college students to raise self-awareness of their eating habits in an effort to develop effective health education approaches for youth. In this study, we investigated (1) how college students change their interest levels and critical viewpoints toward their eating habits; (2) changes in various viewpoints with regard to their decision-making process when eating; and (3) their experiences from interactions on social media when creating dietary diaries via a smartphone app.

Research Design and Participants

This was a before-after study design conducted from September to November 2017 including 42 college students in the greater Tokyo area of Japan who were recruited through bulletin board posters at 5 cooperating universities. Any students at the cooperating universities under 25 years of age were eligible for inclusion in the study, regardless of gender or living situation. Following completion of all research processes, the participants received 2,000 JPY on prepaid cards that could be used at domestic convenience stores.

Overall Design and Grouping

The participants were randomly divided into groups of 3 people and were asked to (1) create dietary diaries through the smartphone app and interact with/follow each other through social media; and (2) answer online surveys at baseline, immediately after creating the dietary diaries, and at 1-month follow up.

Creating Dietary Diaries

Participants recorded all of the food and drinks they consumed in their online diaries, including photos, text, and commentary space, during a 7-consecutive day period using a smartphone app. In the diaries, the app allowed them to register what they ate by choosing from a preregistered menu, products, or ingredients. Participants also wrote about their thoughts while eating or drinking. For example, they recorded the type of attention paid to choosing their meal or how they cooked the meal. Participants followed the diaries of their fellow group participants at least once a day, read blog-style diaries, and communicated with each other using the social media function in the commentary spaces of the diaries.

Online Surveys

Online surveys were administered three times: at baseline, immediately after the intervention, and at 1-month follow up. Participants were asked to respond to items on: (1) degree of interest in their eating habits, which was rated on a scale of 1 (“not at all”) to 7 (“very much”); (2) self-evaluation of their eating habits on a scale of 1 (“very bad”) to 7 (“very good”); and (3) multiple choice responses to the types of topics they considered when choosing food/drink among 10 topics based on a national survey of health and nutrition in Japan [ 41 ]. Data on basic personal characteristics and lifestyle were also collected at baseline. The final follow-up questionnaire included a free-response item asking for their overall experiences through participation in the project.

Research Settings and Smartphone App

Based on the pretest and our previous research [ 39 ], we set a 7-day intervention period so that participants had sufficient time to complete the required tasks, which included both keeping diaries and online surveys, and to ensure that their diaries reflected their eating habits depending on activities on both weekdays and weekends. We determined the number of participants in each group to allow for browsing participants’ diaries without unreasonable effort and to facilitate interaction with each other. We set the number of groups at 14 so that we could feasibly monitor the diaries and preempt any trouble between participants or unexpected disclosures of privacy. The smartphone app asken (asken Inc, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan) was used as the medium through which the participants created their dietary diaries and communicated with each other. The asken app is one of the most popular apps for diet management and nutrition improvement, with over 3.5 million users in Japan as of January 2020 [ 42 ]. We further selected the asken app for this research because it allows users to create diaries within a social networking system, thereby eliminating the need to send private messages, which safeguarded the participants’ privacy and security ( Figure 1 ).

Details of the asken app.

Data Analysis

All 42 participants completed the diaries, but 4 were excluded from the analysis because they did not complete the 1-month follow-up online survey.

Quantitative data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics, version 23 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA). Changes in points for degree of interest, self-evaluation about their eating habits, and the number of topics that participants considered during their decision making were analyzed at three time points: baseline, immediately after creating dietary diaries, and at the 1-month follow up. First, Friedman tests were applied to determine whether any of the differences between the medians at the three time points were statistically significant. Since the P values were less than the significance threshold ( P <.01), Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used to examine the results between two time points compared with baseline, and Bonferroni correction was applied to the P values for multiple comparisons. To evaluate the degree of coherence between factors of participants who had a greater change in their scores for degree of interest than the average immediately after the intervention, Chi square tests were performed to compare basic characteristics and scores for degree of interest at baseline.

The content of free descriptions was analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method suggested by Graneheim and Lundman [ 43 ]. One author (MW) coded the content and discussed the results with other researchers until agreement was reached. The codes were then assigned to suitable categories and subcategories as agreed upon through discussion among researchers.

Ethical Considerations

This study was approved by the Ethical Review Board at Tokyo Women’s Medical University (approval no. 4055, August 8, 2017). Participants were informed in writing of the research purpose and methods, that participation was voluntary, and that all collected data would be used only for research purposes and would be kept confidential. Participants were instructed not to upload any personal information online and provided written informed consent to participate. The investigators employed the latest security software to prevent data breaches, and all computers and documents were stored in secure areas.

Participant Characteristics

The basic characteristics of the participants are summarized in Table 1 .

Basic characteristics of participants (N=38).

All 38 participants were female, ranging in age from 19 to 22 years. Two participants were nutrition majors, and the remaining 36 majored in other subjects. The majority of participants had a self-reported body mass index in the normal range, whereas about 20% were underweight (mean 20.1, range 17.2-24.1) and none was overweight. The majority of participants lived with their families, followed by living alone and in college dormitories. All participants who lived with their families indicated that their parents cooked their meals, and just over half indicated that they cooked for themselves. The large majority of participants rated themselves to be in “excellent” or “good” health, while 3 participants rated their health as “not so good”; none rated their health as “poor.”

Changes in Scores for Degree of Interest and Self-Evaluation of Eating Habits

Participants’ scores for degree of interest in eating habits increased significantly ( P <.001) while the scores for self-evaluation of eating habits decreased significantly ( P <.001) throughout the process of creating dietary diaries. These differences remained significant at the 1-month follow up compared with the respective baseline values ( Table 2 ).

Changes of participants’ awareness associated with their eating habits through the intervention (N=38).

a Compared with the baseline score after Bonferroni correction.

b Scale from 1 (“very bad”) to 7 (“very good”).

c Not applicable.

d Scale from 1 (“not at all”) to 7 (“very much”).

e Multiple choice answers.

The participants’ interest level about their eating increased from baseline immediately after creating their dietary diaries, and then decreased slightly at the 1-month follow up. The average baseline score for self-evaluation of eating habits decreased immediately after creating dietary diaries and increased slightly at the 1-month follow up. A statistically significant but weak negative correlation was observed between scores of interest level and eating habits in self-evaluation (r=0.221, P =.009).

Regarding the factors that affected participants who changed their scores for degree of interest by more than the average, a smaller score at baseline (1-2) had a significant effect. However, there were no significant effects according to living arrangement, self-reported body mass index, cooking status, and self-perceived health condition ( Table 3 ).

Factors affecting participants with substantial changes in their scores of interest level through the intervention (N=38).

a After Yates' correction.

Changes in Dietary Topics Influencing Decision Making in Eating

The numbers of dietary topics participants thought about when they chose their meal/drink increased immediately after creating dietary diaries compared to that at baseline. The increase and the significant difference was maintained at the 1-month follow up ( Table 2 ).

Considering the details of the topics more carefully ( Table 4 ), at baseline, participants thought about “quantity of food consumed,” “eating a variety of foods/ingredients,” “whether to drink alcohol or not,” and “when to eat.” After creating dietary diaries, the number of participants who chose “the nutrient balance of meals,” “whether to eat breakfast or not,” and “eating a variety of foods/ingredients” increased substantially. Eight participants chose “nothing in particular” at baseline, but no participant chose this response after creating dietary diaries.

Categories considered during decision making about food and drink based on multiple choice responses (N=38).

Participants’ Experience From the Project

Main categories of participant experience.

Participants’ descriptions of their project experiences were sorted into 5 categories and 16 subcategories ( Textbox 1 ), along with 52 lower-level codes from 223 meaning units.

Qualitative analysis of participants’ experiences of communication on social media when creating dietary diaries.

Category A: “It was fun/interesting to participate in the project”

A-1: Fun/interesting to keep the records of what I ate.

A-2: Fun/interesting to take photos of what I ate.

A-3: Fun/interesting to see what other members ate.

A-4: Fun/interesting to see comments and stamps from other members.

Category B: “I learned from participating in the project”

B-1: It made me think more of my eating habits and physical activities.

B-2: It made me more conscious of my eating habits.

B-3: I observed and learned from other members.

Category C: “Participating caused some difficulties”

C-1: It took time to complete project tasks.

C-2: It was difficult to record in general.

C-3: The period of the project was too short.

Category D: “Advantages/disadvantages of using the smartphone app and social media”

D-1: Advantages of using the mobile phone app include that it’s familiar, always with me, and easy to record.

D-2: Disadvantages of using the mobile phone app include that it required special techniques and used up batteries.

D-3: Requests to improve the app.

D-4: Would like to use personal social media.

Category E: “My eating habits were affected by This project”

E-1: Improved eating habits during this project.

E-2: Improved eating habits even after this project.

Category A: “It was Fun/Interesting to Participate in the Project”

All participants responded that it was interesting to participate in the project, and their positive impressions about the project were included in Category A. They indicated that they enjoyed seeing what they and the other participants ate, taking photos, and reading comments and posts from other participants: “It was really fun to see what others ate, because we don’t have a chance to see this in normal life. We are all college students, but live such different lives” (22-year old).

Category B: “I Learned From Participating in the Project”

Participants indicated that as a result of keeping their own diaries and observing others’ diaries, they began to pay more attention to their eating habits such as how often they ate snacks, skipped breakfast, and ate/drank late at night: “I hadn’t thought about eating, but through this project, I realized how terrible my eating habits are! How do I eat so many sweets in a day?” (21-year old).

Category C: “Participating Caused Some Difficulties”

Some participants wrote that participating was difficult because taking photos, writing comments in their diaries, and following others’ diaries was time consuming and they sometimes forgot to record what they ate. They also wrote that they felt embarrassed to show their diaries to other participants when they did not eat well: “Even though it only took a little time, sometimes it was painful to record my meals in the diary, especially when I needed to do other things, such as study” (20-year old).

Category D: “Advantages/Disadvantages of Using the Smartphone App and Social Media”

Many participants mentioned that the smartphone app and social media were an advantage for health education because they were familiar with smartphone apps, and it matched their busy college lifestyles. They also found that using social media enabled them to communicate with each other, allowing them to exchange healthy eating tips such as how to include more vegetables in their meals. They also felt encouraged by other participants through comments and “good” posts to keep going.

Some participants wrote that participation was troublesome when they were without internet access or their smartphone batteries were low. One participant mentioned that it was a pity that they could not upload the project posts to the social media that they normally used to share content with friends. “To look back at our eating habits, using the smartphone app is a good idea! It is very familiar for us because we are living with it. On social media, we learned with each other. They encouraged me to complete it.” (22-year old). “The app needed some time to get used to. Hopefully, it would be better if the recording method becomes easier.” (19-year old).

Category E: “My Eating Habits Were Affected by this Project”

Some participants wrote that they changed their eating habits as a result of participating and began to eat breakfast every day, choose well-balanced meals with fresh vegetables/fruits, and avoid too many snacks and midnight eating. “After the project, I am trying to eat well-balanced meals as much as possible with many kinds of ingredients not only carbohydrates such as rice balls and bread” (21-year old).

Principal Findings

This study represents an early attempt to explain how interaction using social media in conjunction with dietary diaries on a smartphone app motivates college students to develop interest in their eating habits. This intervention involved a multiplex process; nevertheless, the results show that college students experienced encouragement and developed an interest in their eating habits through interaction on social media when creating dietary diaries on the smartphone app. This methodology has potential as an effective means for youth to have a chance to review their eating habits for promoting healthier lifestyles.

Comparison With Prior Work

Participant selection introduced some bias, resulting in only female participants. Young women who were concerned about their eating habits were more likely to be drawn to this research and to agree to participate. This was further influenced by the recruitment method because the collaborating colleges had departments with more female students. A well-developed recruitment plan is needed to enroll similar numbers of male students in future studies. Moreover, participants’ basic characteristics such as self-reported body mass index, living arrangement, who cooked their meals, and their self-perceived health conditions did not differ from the average status of college students in the central-east area around Tokyo [ 44 ]. Participants’ self-evaluations indicated that their baseline eating habits were not necessarily ideal, which was consistent with survey results from the Kanto Regional Agricultural Administration Office of Japan Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries [ 45 ], which showed that 42.2% of college students who live away from their families do not eat enough vegetables and 71.3% want to improve their eating habits, suggesting the need for a new approach to providing health education on nutrition to this age group.

Verifying the Effectiveness of Dietary Diaries and Communication via Social Media: Increased Consciousness of Eating Habits

Participants’ awareness of their eating habits increased, which was maintained during the project, although decreased slightly at the 1-month follow up. Participants became more interested in and thought critically about their eating habits, especially about eating nutrient-balanced meals and a variety of foods/ingredients. A previous study that incorporated use of an iPad reported that using photos and texts to record eating was an effective way to increase awareness of food intake [ 46 ]. Similarly, in our study, photos on diaries enabled participants to see at a glance how much they ate and how well-balanced the meal was, complementing their limited written descriptions. In addition, describing their thoughts when choosing a meal/drink in their diaries helped them to recognize what factors affect their decision making. Browsing and writing comments on other participants’ diaries further provided an objective/new point of view to look back their own eating habits in comparative ways. In social learning theory, Bandura and Schunk [ 47 ] stated that people learn from each other through observation, imitation, and modeling. Our results support this theory of enhancing the peer-learning process but also suggest two challenges that warrant further examination: (1) how to sustain eating habit awareness/interest for a long period, and (2) how to motivate people to pay attention to the less visible factors such as how meals are processed.

Advantage of Using Social Media and Smartphone Apps to Promote Healthy Eating for College Students

The results showed that social media and smartphone apps have great potential for providing health education to youth because these tools are familiar to college students. Most participants evaluated the project as interesting and fun, and indicated that they discovered many tools for improving their eating habits. All participants also indicated that they felt motivated and encouraged by their fellow participants. This experience of peer support is important for health promotion, especially in this age group, as previously reported in the concept analysis of peer health support [ 48 ]. Wang and colleagues [ 49 , 50 ] developed a participatory action research strategy called “Photovoice” as an effective method for assessing the needs of social minorities. College students may similarly be seen as a group in need of help, given their lack of interest in and awareness of healthier eating habits. We suggest an approach such as “Photovoice-Online” using social media via smartphones to overcome this disadvantage, which requires participants to meet in person to discuss the problems with each other. Further research is needed to analyze the group dynamics of social media communication depending on specific group characteristics.

When social media is used in research, ethical considerations are an important concern. In particular, privacy and confidentiality safeguards are imperative when adopting social media for use in research. Holmberg et al [ 51 ] conducted a study about social media usage of adolescent patients with obesity, stating that social media could be a source for health inspiration, information, and support, but requires competencies. In this study, we adopted social media to encourage college students to be more conscious in their eating habits; however, in the setting of health education, more examination is needed to teach college students health literacy to use social media.

A few participants mentioned that it took time for them to record their meal/drink and communicate with others. Smartphone apps, which are developed and improved at a rapid pace, are already offering photo-based nutrient information, which will make the dietary diary recording process easier and more accurate. As desirable tools for college students, it would be preferable that more complementary smartphone apps including such high-level technologies would be available in the near future.

Limitations

This study has some limitations. As mentioned earlier, all participants in the study were young women, who are considered to be more conscious of their eating habits than young men. In addition, the study sample had a limited number of participants. Furthermore, as Deliens et al [ 7 ] noted, college students’ eating habits are influenced by various factors such as social networks and physical/macro environments. As we were focused on the comparison with national Japanese results, we did not use the established questionnaires for international dietary assessment. Therefore, our results are not generalizable to larger populations. This intervention method adopted a multiplex process; thus, we could not analyze exactly which factors affected participants and to what extent. Finally, we did not examine participants’ group dynamics, which may have also influenced the results.

This research explores how interactions through social media used in conjunction with smartphone apps of dietary diaries can motivate college students to develop an interest in healthier eating habits. Through interactions on social media when creating dietary diaries on a smartphone app, college students experienced encouragement and developed an interest in their eating. This methodology, which embraces peer education and peer support, holds promise for the future. A closer examination of group dynamics associated with participant interactions and longer-term experiments to develop sustainable motivation are needed to further advance this field of research.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our appreciation to all the participants, and to asken Inc, which generously let us use their smartphone app and their images for our research. We are grateful to Dr Fumiko Miyaji and Professor Akiko Sasaki for their contributions. This research was supported by grants from the Japan Society for Promoting Science Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Grant No 26893283 (2014-2017) and 17K12549 (2017-2020).

Authors' Contributions: MW contributed to the conception and design of this study, performed the statistical/qualitative analysis, and drafted the manuscript. EK instructively engaged in data analysis with MW. EK and YS critically reviewed the manuscript and supervised the whole study process. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

More than half of adults have made changes to be more sustainable, research finds

More than half of adults have made changes to be more sustainable in the last 12 months, according to research.

A poll of 1,000 adults found new habits include limiting food waste (66 per cent), using bags for life at the supermarket (64 per cent) and turning off lights in the house (64 per cent).

Others are washing laundry on cold cycles (45 per cent), growing their own fruit and vegetables (30 per cent) and cycling more (18 per cent).

A third have even changed their food habits to become more eco-friendly – including only buying local produce, not purchasing items in plastic packaging and doing meat-free Mondays.

But 68 per cent already consider themselves to be eco-friendly – with an average of five sustainable habits under their belt already.

The research was commissioned by Hyundai , to launch the world’s first car powered fete, using 12 of the brand’s electric vehicles to showcase the role innovation can play in a more sustainable life.

It also emerged four in 10 of those who reside in the countryside find it hard to maintain eco-friendly measures – compared to just 16 per cent of the city dwellers.

The cost (48 per cent) and poor public transport (45 per cent) were found to be the main barriers for people in the countryside living more sustainable lives.

While half of those living in a rural area want to do better but find it challenging due to the lack of infrastructure.

As a result, only eight per cent of countryside folk class themselves as ‘very eco-friendly’ – although 72 per cent have tried to limit their food waste and 69 per cent recycle everything possible.

Despite this, 39 per cent want to move to the countryside because it’s quieter, to enjoy the scenic views and to experience cleaner air than in the city, according to the study carried out via OnePoll.

Ashley Andrew, President, of Hyundai Motor UK, which powered the village fete using its all new KONA Electric, IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6, said: “We chose the rural community of Chettle as we were impressed by the focus on safeguarding its beautiful landscape for the future as well as acting in a more environmentally responsible way, which aligns with our ethos.

“We hope that the event inspires the broader community to think creatively about what they can do in their own lives to live better for the future.

“As we move forward to a net zero future, we believe EVs offer many benefits and consumer education remains an important part of that journey.”

From news to politics, travel to sport, culture to climate – The Independent has a host of free newsletters to suit your interests. To find the stories you want to read, and more, in your inbox, click here .

Millennial vs. boomer budgets: How spending has changed for young adults in the last 30 years

• Business Insider looked at how adults between 25 and 34 spent their money in 1989 compared to 2022.
• The findings show us how prices and habits changed since boomers were young adults.
• Young adults today are spending less on alcohol and mortgage interest.

In 1989, you could see "Batman" and "When Harry Met Sally" in the movie theater. People wore brightly colored fashion and bought Nintendo's Game Boy consoles.

In 2022, many people were still working from home amid the pandemic's disruptions to the workplace. They were wearing a lot of athleisure, and perhaps venturing back to movie theaters — this time to see "The Batman."

In the intervening 33 years, how younger adults spend their money has changed dramatically. Business Insider analyzed spending data for adults aged 25 to 34 in 1989 — which covers part of the baby-boomer generation — and 2022 — which largely consists of millennials — on various kinds of food, housing, education, and more.

In 1989, people between 25 and 34 were spending more, when adjusted for inflation, on beef, alcohol, and homes they owned than this age group did in 2022.

Here's how expenditures looked between the two:

For this analysis, Business Insider compared average annual expenditures for households that were headed by 25- to 34-year-olds in 2022 to those in 1989. We used data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys program published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. BI calculated inflation-adjusted figures for 1989 using consumer price index data to put those costs into 2022 dollars.

We wanted to examine how spending for baby boomers when they were young adults compared to millennials who were around the same age in 2022.

The differences in average spending between young adults in 1989 and 2022 could be due to changes in prices or shifting habits.

Take a look at rented dwellings, for example. The consumer price index data for rent of primary residence suggests the increase between 1989 and 2022 can be largely explained by a rise in prices, but that data also implies that younger adults are more likely to rent an apartment rather than own a home.

Millennials and Gen Zers also have different habits and living situations than older generations. For example, millennials are finding it hard to become homeowners in the US and Gallup survey results show that adults under 35 who drink alcohol are consuming fewer drinks on average than those under 35 years ago.

Taken together, the data offers a window into how young adults' budgets have changed over the past three decades, either due to rising costs for things like healthcare, seafood, fresh fruits, housing, and used vehicles, or because of changing habits and lifestyles. Below is a closer look at what's going on. 

Millennials are spending a lot more on healthcare and rented housing

Health-insurance spending stands out between the average adult aged 25 to 34 in 1989 compared to 2022. After adjusting for inflation, the average person in that age group spent $755 in 1989. In 2022, it was over 200% higher.

A BLS report from November 2023 by Grace Hill looked at the effects of the pandemic on healthcare spending overall and broken down by age groups and other groupings.

Related stories

"The only age groups to increase overall healthcare spending in 2020 were the 25–34- and 45–54-years age groups," the report stated. "These age groups had the largest increases in health insurance expenditures: the largest component in healthcare spending."

Additionally, younger adults were spending more on rent and related expenses in 2022 than younger adults were in 1989. Based on average data, this group was spending about 60% more on apartments and other rented housing.

Millennials are spending less on used vehicles and mortgage interest

In 2022, the average young adult spent more on gas and motor oil than this group in 1989. However, they weren't spending as much on used cars and trucks.

Data not adjusted for inflation shows that used car and truck expenditures increased more than the CPI for used cars and trucks between 1989 and 2022.

A December BLS report about consumer expenditures said households in general, not just among younger adults, were spending more in 2022 on rent and related expenses and owned homes than in 2021.

"High home prices, high mortgage lending rates, and particularly high rental rates for apartments placed upward pressure on spending over the year," the report said. "Mortgage interest and principal payments are essential expenditures for owned dwellings, and a rapidly changing mortgage environment sent an exogenous shock through the market."

The report added that the high average mortgage rate in 2022 led to "consumers on the margin out of owned dwellings and into the rental market."

Though BLS doesn't directly track price changes for owned housing, it estimates them with a measure of owners' equivalent rent of residences, which is up over 160% between 1989 and 2022. Meanwhile, younger adults' spending for owned dwellings was up over 120% before adjusting 1989 expenditures for inflation.

Younger adults in 2022 spent more money on fresh fruits, vegetables, and seafood

In 1989, people between 25 and 34 spent less on fresh fruits and vegetables — including processed vegetables — than those in this age range decades later. The average person in this cohort spent 71% more on fresh fruits in 2022 than their counterparts in 1989. Plus, they spent 22% more on fish and seafood in 2022 and 4% more on poultry.

While not the exact years we looked at for our analysis, a 2016 report from the Pew Research Center shed light on how eating habits changed between 1970 and 2014; there were notable increases in chicken and cheese consumption over that time.

We can also look at consumer price index data to see how inflation impacted food spending. Before adjusting 1989 data for inflation, younger adults in 2022 spent 304% more on fresh fruits than younger adults in 1989. Over that period, prices for fresh fruits, based on the CPI, were up by nearly 170%, meaning that while part of the change in spending between the two years can be explained by price increases, younger adults were also eating a lot more fresh fruit in 2022 than in 1989.

In 2022, younger adults spent less on alcohol, beef, and dairy products

Average annual spending data shows that the average younger adult in 2022 spent almost 40% less on beef than the average younger adult in 1989. They also spent about 55% less on fresh milk and cream. The 2016 Pew Research Center report also found that people were eating a lot less beef in 2014 than in 1970. The same was true for drinking milk.

Based on our analysis, the average adult between 25 and 34 spent more on nonalcoholic beverages and less on alcoholic beverages in 2022 than the average young adult in 1989. A Gallup post shows alcohol drinkers who were between 18 and 34 in 2021 to 2023, which would also include Gen Z , had an average of 3.6 alcoholic drinks in the past seven days. Between 2001 and 2003, the average consumption was 5.2 drinks among drinkers aged 18 to 34.

Our analysis found that younger adults in 2022 weren't spending as much on cereals and cereal products — which included "ready-to-eat and cooked cereals, pasta, flour, prepared flour mixes, and other cereal products such as cornmeal, corn starch, and rice" — as younger adults were in 1989. Based on reporting from multiple outlets, cereal has fallen in popularity while breakfast sandwiches , bars, and other items that are easy to eat on the go are ​now popular.

Watch: Millions of homes could flood the US housing market thanks to boomers

• Main content

• Focus Articles
• Agriculture/Commodities
• Food Manufacturing
• Food Retail
• Foodservice
• Company Earnings
• — column break —
• Health & Wellness
• Investments
• Plant-Based
• Supply Chain
• FI Newscast
• Food Institute Report
• Today in Food
• Earnings and Sales
• Member Profile
• Economic Benchmarking
• Newsletter Sign Up
• Advisory Services
• Become a Member
• Join Our Team
• Food Labeling
• LATAM Food Week
• Food Industry

Research Shows Americans Now Seek Snacks ‘Day and Night’

Kelly Beaton | May 13, 2024

Consumers are picking up the pace when it comes to snacking. According to retail insights company 84.51°, 27% of shoppers said they’re snacking multiple times per day– up 15% from 2023.

With this year’s Sweets & Snacks Expo set to begin in Indianapolis on Tuesday, retail insights company 84.51° released findings from its May Consumer Digest , shedding light on the latest consumer behaviors. The findings were based on a sample of consumers who shopped at Kroger stores within the past three months. Data on the frequency of snacking especially stood out.

“Shoppers are snacking more frequently than they did last year … snacking day and night,” 84.51°’s report noted.

Evenings and late afternoons (84%) are the most popular time of day to snack, followed by afternoon (80%) and early morning (60%).

There was also a new favorite snack item atop 84.51°’s May report findings. Cheese (70%) was the most popular item to snack, up 3% from the prior report.

“Americans love cheese,” Chad Galer – VP of product innovation at Dairy Management Inc. – told The Food Institute earlier this year. “There’s more variety than ever available in the U.S., with a strong specialty and artisan cheese industry. (That) gives consumers the chance to explore different types, especially with the popularity of cheeseboards and grazing tables.”

Other popular snack items include fruits (68%), potato chips (67%), and crackers (63%). Chocolate and cookies (tied at 58%) were next in the rankings, with both of those snack items up 4% from last year.

Taste and flavor (75%) are most important to consumers when choosing snack items, followed by craving (55%) and convenience (46%).

Of course, price is important to snackers amid the current inflationary period. To determine if they’re getting a good value, consumers look for the following attributes in snack products:

• Price (32%)
• Quality Product (15%)
• Flavor (13%)
• Health Benefits (10%)

A final, noteworthy finding from the consumer report: shoppers ages 35-44 are more likely than any other age group to purchase snacks online. In general, though, 85% of all consumers surveyed said they buy snacks in-store.

The Food Institute Podcast

Corn stocks, poultry flocks, and highly-pathogenic avian influenza – what does the U.S. agricultural system look like amid inflation and other headwinds? Wells Fargo Chief Agricultural Economist Dr. Michael Swanson discussed specialty crops, grain plantings, and what to expect in the growing year to come.

Popular posts

• The 15 Healthiest Low-Carb Foods August 16, 2023
• Top 5 Highest-Grossing U.S. Fast-Food Chains August 18, 2023
• The 5 Healthiest Yogurts Currently on Store Shelves March 29, 2022
• Stories of the Year: Plant Enzymes Can Turn Sugar to Fiber December 28, 2023
• The Big 8 Food Allergens May 9, 2020

Frozen Plant-Based Meals Gaining Loyalty

May 7, 2024

How Much Does Sustainability Influence Consumer Shopping Habits?

May 6, 2024

The Summer of Swicy

May 3, 2024

Sustainability in the Snack Aisle: Eco-friendly Food Gains Momentum

April 26, 2024

Top 3 Spring/Summer Trends in Retail

April 3, 2024

What the Jal? Jalapenos Aren’t Hot Anymore

March 13, 2024

Say Cheese: Report Reveals Biggest Cheese-Loving Nations

March 7, 2024

Three Key Grocery Shopper Trends in 2024

February 26, 2024

Privacy Overview

• Northern Ireland
• Hurling & Camogie
• GAA Fixtures & Results
• Personal Finance
• Holidays & Travel
• Food & Drink
• Irish Language
• Entertainment
• Opens in new window

Healthy packed lunches 45% more expensive on average, charity research suggests

The food foundation looked at food prices across five major supermarkets..

Healthy packed lunches of wholemeal bread and fruit are on average 45% more expensive for parents to put together than less nutritious versions with chocolate spread and crisps, research has suggested.

The Food Foundation charity said items for an unhealthy packed lunch were cheaper overall at five major supermarkets, arguing that this demonstrates the barriers parents face when trying to feed their children a good diet.

Tesco came in as the cheapest place to get food for a healthy packed lunch, the charity said, at a weekly cost of £8.56 as of this month.

Morrisons was the most expensive retailer, with the price of a healthy packed lunch per week coming in at £11.72, although this was down slightly from £11.80 in October.

King applauded on Royal Opera House stage hand in hand with performers

Funeral to be held for teenager who died in east London sword attack

The equivalent cost at Sainsbury’s was £10.47, Aldi was £10.08 and Asda was £9.18.

The charity said its research showed the largest price rise in recent months was at Sainsbury’s, where it calculated customers would have to spend 9% more than they did at the start of the academic year in September (£9.61) for the same packed lunch.

Unhealthy lunches for the research were made up of white bread with chocolate spread instead of wholemeal with cheese, flavoured yogurt rather than a plain, unsweetened version and snacks such as crisps as opposed to the four portions of fruit and vegetables incorporated into the healthy lunch.

Items for an unhealthy lunch bought from Aldi cost almost half as much as for a healthy one – at £5.68 compared to £10.08, according to the research.

The Food Foundation re-stated a call previously made by campaigners for the Government to extend Free School Meals (FSM) to ensure the most deprived children are “not priced” of a nutritious lunch.

All children at state schools in England are entitled to free school lunches in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, but other pupils are not entitled to FSM unless their family is in receipt of benefits.

Currently, families who claim Universal Credit (UC) are only eligible for FSM if their family’s post-tax earnings are less than £7,400 a year.

The charity has also called on retailers to offer a lunchbox meal deal on healthier items – such as breads that are 50:50 wheat, snackable fruit and vegetables, and single portion unsweetened yogurt pots – to allow parents to “easily buy items to make up a week of healthy lunch boxes”.

Shona Goudie, policy and advocacy manager at The Food Foundation, said, “The Government’s stringent eligibility criteria to qualify for Free School Meals is leaving hundreds of thousands of children who are living in poverty but missing out on them at risk of malnutrition.

“Children from families with incomes not low enough to qualify for a Free School Meal and yet unable to afford lunch from the school canteen are left reliant on unhealthy packed lunches.

“No-one should be priced out of being able to provide healthy food for their children and retailers need to do more to support families to afford the food they need.”

A Morrisons spokesperson said they are “committed to working hard to keep prices down and competitive for our customers without any compromise on quality”.

They said they were “disappointed” in-store options such as the supermarket’s Savers bread, humous and Wonky Carrots were not chosen as part of The Food Foundation’s research.

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “We want to make good food affordable for everyone and are committed to offering a wide range of healthy lunchbox options at great value.”

An Aldi spokesperson said: “Aldi has been officially named the UK’s cheapest supermarket for three years running by consumer champion Which? and our promise to our customers is that they will always make significant savings when they shop with us.

“We offer a wide selection of healthy, affordable food including fresh British fruit and vegetables.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We have extended eligibility for free school meals to more groups of children than any other government over the past half a century with the number of children receiving free school meals having more than doubled since 2010.

“There are currently two million pupils claiming a free school meal, 23.8% of all pupils. In total, we spend over £1 billion each year on free meals.”

Hayfever help - grab the garlic, ginger, apples and onions - Nutrition

How to help your body recover from a marathon - Nutrition

Making sense of your 5 a day, healthy fats and portion sizes - Nutrition

A balanced diet may be linked to better brain health, study suggests

Is there a better option than the weekly weigh in and rigid diet culture of slimming groups?

Money blog: 'Extremely worrying' mortgage trend revealed in new report; a third of people make this mistake when booking their holiday - and how to avoid it

A third of travellers are making the same mistake when going on holiday, figures show. Read about this and all the latest consumer and personal finance news in the Money blog - and leave a comment or your money problem in the box below.

Thursday 16 May 2024 20:00, UK

• 'Extremely worrying' mortgage trend revealed by new government data
• Almost a third of travellers make this insurance mistake - here's what you need to know
• How much the price of packed lunches has soared - and the cheapest supermarkets to buy a healthy one
• Major firms release financial updates
• UK economy in safe hands 'whoever wins' election, top bank chief tells Sky News

Essential reads

• How much do buskers actually make - and what's it like?
• The best bank accounts for your kids
• Basically...  What is PIP - and what could government changes mean?
• How to make sure your car passes its MOT
• Cheap Eats:  Michelin-star chef reveals his top steals in London - including an unbeatable sub sandwich
• Money Problem: My workplace wants to pay us by the minute - what can I do?
• Best of the Money blog - an archive

Ask a question or make a comment

Landlords selling properties "represent the single biggest threat to renters", according to the UK's landlord association.

Government data shows 5,790 households were threatened with homelessness between October to December last year due to receiving a notice to end an assured shorthold tenancy (this ends a person's tenancy).

And the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) has said 45% have been left needing help because their landlord planned to sell the property in the second half of 2023.

Separately, data from Rightmove found that 50,000 rental properties were needed to bring the supply of rental homes back to pre-pandemic levels.

Ben Beadle, chief executive of the NRLA, said the only answer was to "ensure responsible landlords have the confidence to stay in the market and sustain tenancies".

He said it was "vital" the Renters Reform Bill, which is currently being debated in the House of Lords, "worked for landlords as well as tenants".

"Landlords selling up is the single biggest challenge renters face," Mr Beadle said.

Around 16% of high net worth shoppers have cut spending on luxury goods, research shows - with Burberry among the companies seemingly taking a hit.

Data from wealth management firm Saltus , which surveyed 2,000 Britons who had assets of more than £250,000, found 16.29% of respondents had cut down on their personal spending in response to the current high interest rate environment and/or the impact of the rising cost of living.

And 15.78%, said they had cut down on luxury items and designer clothes. 

Meanwhile, just 9.42% of respondents said the current environment had not impacted their lifestyle.

The figures follow data this week from designer store Burberry - which reported a 34% drop in annual operating profit.

Mike Stimpson, partner at Saltus, said high net worth individuals were having to "prioritise spending on essential costs including mortgages and supporting their families". 

"While this reduction is not limited entirely to personal spending on luxury items, it is inevitable that brands like Burberry feel the impact, although different businesses will clearly respond differently to these pressures," he said.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is hiring 2,500 "external agents" to crackdown on "benefit cheats".

The extra staff will check millions of Universal Credit claims for accuracy as part of the government's new fraud plan.

Combined with the DWP's own internal agents tackling fraud, this will take the headcount to nearly 6,000 people.

In addition to this, the DWP is introducing a new civil penalty to punish fraudsters, and investing £70m into advanced data analytics to catch those who "exploit the natural compassion and generosity of the British people".

Work and pensions secretary Mel Stride, said: "We are scaling up the fight against those stealing from the taxpayer, building on our success in stopping £18bn going into the wrong hands in 2022-23.

"With new legal powers, better data and thousands of additional staff, our comprehensive plan ensures we have the necessary tools to tackle the scourge of benefit fraud."

With the new 15 hours a week free childcare funding coming into effect this week for children aged between 9-23 months, research shows grandparents still play a key role in helping with costs.

In April, all two-year-olds from eligible working families became entitled to 15 hours free childcare each week. 

And as of this week, eligible working parents of children aged between 9-23 months are also able to apply to claim the same from September.

The government plans to increase this to 30 hours a week from September 2025.

However, grandparents still play a key role and therefore are still likely to be called upon for help from parents, according to data from the finance firm SunLife .

Data shows that half of the UK's 14 million grandparents provide childcare for their grandchildren during the working week and this rises to 55% of those with grandchildren under the age of one.

On average, the UK's grandparents spend between 22-24 hours a week providing free childcare for grandchildren under three-years-old.

So how much are grandparents saving their families and what if they were paid?

Research suggests grandparents are saving parents around £250 a week in childcare costs on average - this means that collectively, grandparents are saving their families £96bn in equivalent childcare costs every year. 

SunLife's grandparent salary calculator, which uses the average pay for the many roles grandparents are taking to calculate what their "grandparent salary" would be, has also found that if grandparents were paid for the 22 hours a week they would receive an annual salary of £13,188.

Victoria Heath, chief marketing officer at SunLife, said it was   "no wonder" one in five grandparents felt their children would struggle financially without their help.

She said research showed that 13% of grandparents felt they were relied on too much for childcare, and 14% loved doing it but felt it was too much at their age.

"Having said that, most (59%) grandparents who do provide childcare say they love helping out, so it is likely they will still play a key role, because whether they are still 'needed' or not, they are certainly still wanted, and most are more than happy to do it," Ms Heath added.

How can you apply for the 15 hours free childcare?

To apply for the funding you'll need the following: 

• National Insurance number;
• Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR), if you're self-employed;
• the UK birth certificate reference number of any children you're applying for;
• the date you started or are due to start work.

Then, you'll need to go onto the gov.uk website and start an application.

It usually takes 20 minutes to apply and once your application has been approved, you'll get a code for free childcare to give to your childcare provider.

Mortgage possession actions have continued to rise and are currently above the previous year's levels, according to data from the Ministry of Justice .

The latest data shows mortgage claims, orders, warrants and repossessions have continued their gradual upward trend and claims are at their highest since 2019.

When compared to the same quarter in 2023, mortgage possession claims increased from 4,035 to 5,182 - this is a rise of 28%.

Meanwhile, mortgage orders increased from 2,532 to 3,019, warrants from 2,636 to 2,881 and repossessions by county court bailiffs from 729 to 759.

Landlord possession claims also increased from 23,389 to 24,874 when compared to the same quarter last year.

Craig Fish, director at Lodestone mortgages and protection, told Newspage things "need to change and quickly before it's too late".

"Though this data makes hard reading and is extremely worrying, it's not unexpected due to the significantly higher interest rate environment in which borrowers now find themselves," he said.

And Ben Perks, managing director at Orchard Financial Advisers, said he was "concerned these figures will continue to rise". 

He told Newspage: "The Bank of England seems totally oblivious to the plight of the average mortgage borrower, but hopefully this data will kick their hesitancy to drop the base rate firmly into touch. The time to act is now."

Tesco has recalled its sandwich pickle over fears it may contain glass.

The supermarket has pulled its 295g jars of Tesco Sandwich Pickle with the batch code 3254 and best before date of 11 September 2025 due to the concerns of glass traces.

The Food Standards Agency has said on its website: "This product may contain pieces of glass which makes it unsafe to eat."

Last year, the supermarket chain had to recall pastry products, including sausage rolls and steak and ale pies, over fears they contained pieces of metal and plastic.

A Tesco spokesperson told Sky News: "We've been made aware that a specific date/batch code of Tesco Sandwich Pickle may contain small pieces of glass. Therefore, this product could pose a safety risk if consumed.

"Please do not consume this product and instead return any affected product to store where a full refund will be given. No receipt is required.

"Tesco apologises to our customers for any inconvenience caused."

By Ed Clowes, news reporter

The FTSE 100 has remained stable out of the gate this morning after hitting a record high on Wednesday as better-than-expected inflation data in the US raised hopes of an interest rate cut in September.

It's been a busy start to the day with financial updates from BT Group, Premier Foods, Sage Group, and easyJet.

We'll start with easyJet, after the airline announced that its chief executive officer, Johan Lundgren, would step down in January 2025.

Mr Lundgren, who has served as CEO since 2017, will be replaced by the carrier's finance boss Kenton Jarvis.

In a financial update on its performance throughout the first half of the year, easyJet reported slightly higher revenues than anticipated, while cutting its losses compared to the same period last year.

The airline's share price fell by 6% in early trading this morning.

Elsewhere, telecoms giant BT said it had completed a £3bn cost-cutting programme ahead of schedule, and announced a further £3bn in planned savings by 2029.

The company told Sky News that the planned reductions in spending would not lead to more job losses, after BT announced last year that it would eliminate 55,000 roles.

Incoming boss Allison Kirkby said she wanted the business to prioritise the UK, with some analysts expecting BT to look at the futures of its Italian, Irish, and American divisions.

And last but not least, one of Europe's largest sellers of Rolex watches has said that sales in the UK are still down because some tourists don't want to buy here "due to the lack of VAT free shopping".

Nice for some.

The price of a healthy packed lunch has soared by around 45%, according to new research.

A lunch of wholemeal bread and fruit is more expensive for parents to put together than less nutritious versions with chocolate spread and crisps, The Food Foundation charity has found.

Unhealthy lunches for the research were made up of white bread with chocolate spread instead of wholemeal with cheese, flavoured yoghurt rather than a plain, unsweetened version and snacks such as crisps as opposed to the four portions of fruit and vegetables incorporated into the healthy lunch.

And when it came to the cheapest supermarket to buy a healthy packed lunch, Tesco topped the list with a weekly cost of £8.56 as of this month.

Morrisons was the most expensive retailer, with the price of a healthy packed lunch per week coming in at £11.72, although this was down slightly from £11.80 in October.

The equivalent cost at Sainsbury's was £10.47, Aldi was £10.08 and Asda was £9.18.

Research also showed the largest price rise in recent months was at Sainsbury's, where customers have to spend 9% more than they did at the start of the academic year in September (£9.61) for the same packed lunch.

Shona Goudie, policy and advocacy manager at The Food Foundation, said, the government's stringent eligibility criteria to qualify for free school meals was "leaving hundreds of thousands of children" who are living in poverty "at risk of malnutrition".

"No one should be priced out of being able to provide healthy food for their children and retailers need to do more to support families to afford the food they need," she said.

By Bhvishya Patel , Money team

We spoke to three buskers to find out what it's like performing on the street in the UK.

Amir, 29, came to UK from Pakistan with passion for music

Amir Hashmi moved to the UK in 2022 to study, said he began busking in central London 10 months ago because "music was his passion".

"In Pakistan there are many problems so I decided to leave and move to London. I feel I can do better in London than my country," he said.

He said busking was now his primary income but at times he did jobs at warehouses to get by.

"I never started this for money, I started because it is my passion but now this is my main job as well," he said.

Amir, who often performs in the capital's Piccadilly Circus or along Oxford Street, said often he returned home with just £10-15 in his pocket after a day's busking.

He said: "Many times I sleep without food and sometimes I sleep on the floor of the road when I have no shelter.

"I don't have my own place to live but I have friends who often let me stay with them. They don't charge me any rent - they look after me.

"Sometimes I do private shows for income but it's very hard because the cost of living is increasing. If I go somewhere then most of the time I prefer to walk. I walk with my speakers and carry my gear."

Despite his financial struggles, Amir said he wanted to continue performing on the street as his "goal was to make people happy".

He said: "With busking, there is no stage and you can just start performing. Whenever I am performing, I connect with the people who have come to listen. If I feel people are not enjoying it, I change the song and try and make them happy."

Earlier this year, Amir recorded a song with Neha Nazneen Shakil, a Malayalam actress from India, who approached the singer three months ago in Oxford Street.

"I wrote that song 12 years ago and after all these years my song has been recorded now in London," he added.

Jade, 24, quit retail to busk

Jade Thornton, from Amersham, started busking in 2017 with a friend after leaving college at the age of 17 and quickly realised it was something she enjoyed doing and could make a living from.

She began doing it full-time at the end of 2018 but when the pandemic hit she described becoming "unemployed overnight" and having to take up retail jobs to support herself.

"I chose not to go to university - I just thought it wasn't for me so I went straight into some part-time retail jobs," she said.

"I take my cap off to anyone who does retail - it is one of the most gruelling jobs. People who do retail don't get nearly as much respect as they deserve. 

"Some of the customers I was facing were not that kind and I thought this is making me miserable, so I just thought 'if I don't leave now then when?'"

As the global economy slowly began to recover, she decided to leave retail and pursue music full-time in 2022.

"It is hard to switch off - I do busking but I am constantly messaging clients, writing set lists and learning songs," she said.

When it came to finances, Jade said there was no average to how much she could earn but it could fluctuate from £15-100 day-to-day depending on a number of factors.

"It relies on the time of month, whether the sun is out, if people have been paid, if Christmas is on the way or if Christmas has just passed," she explained.

The musician said she did struggle initially when she began busking but her parents were always supportive.

She said: "You obviously get a few questions from people asking 'are you sure you want to quit your job and sing on the street?'

"I lived at home for a long time and I'm grateful my parents could support me in that way because I know not everyone has that opportunity."

While performing outdoors is now Jade's full-time job, she said some months were more difficult to make money than others.

"If I'm being brutally honest in months like January and February it would be super difficult. This year I had enough gigs in December to cover me for January," she said.

"Last year from June-July and December I did not have to go busking because I got so many gigs through busking. I'm part of a lot of online agencies and I also do lots of pub gigs, weddings, birthdays and other events."

Jade noted though that the cost of living crisis had made things harder.

She said: "A few pub gigs I've had have been cancelled because they've had to rethink their strategies but if somebody cancels then I can just go out busking. There has been a slight dent when it comes to finances but that's from COVID as well - with COVID I was unemployed overnight."

The young musician went on to say she was "very grateful" when somebody did tip her and even small gestures like sitting, listening or just a smile were "currencies in themselves".

"It's escapism for me as a singer and then it's escapism for the audience as well," she added.

"Children also have such a great time listening to buskers and some may not have an opportunity for many reasons to go and see live music so if they can come across it in the street and that can spark something that's a wonderful thing to think I'm a little part of that."

Charlotte, 34, long-time busker

Charlotte Campbell, 34, who usually busks along the Southbank or in the London Underground, said she started busking during the 2012 London Olympics and while "busking used to be enough", more recently she has had to take on more gigs in the evening.

"A typical day is usually busking until around 6pm and then a gig in the evening - 8pm onwards," she said.

"I could still probably make a living from busking but I've taken on more paid gigs since the pandemic because everything became so uncertain. I think that uncertainty has just carried through now - that seems to be the way of life now."

The musician said tips for her CDs, which she puts on display during her performances, ranged between £5-10 and in the current cashless climate a card reader was "essential".

She said she pre-sets her card reader to £3 when playing on the Southbank and £2 when busking inside the London Underground "because people are rushing".

While she described her earnings as a "trade secret", she said the busker income had "definitely gone down" but this was due to a few factors - the pandemic, people carrying less cash and the cost of living crisis.

"Also, a lots of pitches have closed which means there are a lot more buskers trying to compete for one spot so all of those things have impacted my living as a busker," she said.

"I would say even though my income is primarily from busking I have had to subsidise it with more paid gigs than before. I just haven't felt as secure in my living from busking in the last couple of years.

"Most of the gigs I have are booked by people who have seen me busking so indirectly busking is my entire career- if I don't busk I wouldn't get the gigs I play in the evening. So directly and indirectly busking is my entire income."

In spite of uncertainty, she said it was freeing to be able to go out and perform for people in an intimate way.

"You are not up on a stage and there is no separation between you and them.  It's a really great connection you can make - I want to be able to hold onto that," she added.

Every Thursday  Savings Champion founder Anna Bowes  gives us an insight into the savings market and how to make the most of your money. Today she's focusing on children's accounts...

While the rates on adult savings accounts have risen and fallen over the course of 2024, the top rates on accounts for children have remained stable - but are pretty competitive once again, as other account rates have started to fall. 

And there are plenty of different types of savings accounts to choose from, from the tax free Junior ISA, to children's regular savings accounts, fixed term bonds and easy access accounts.

Those who are able to start saving for their children early, could significantly improve their financial health in the future – especially when taking compounding interest into consideration.

If you were to save £50 a month from birth, you could give them a gift of more than £17,250 at age 18, assuming a tax-free interest rate of 4.95% - which is currently the top Junior ISA rate available.

If you, your friends and family were able to gift a total of £9,000 a year to a child (the current Junior ISA allowance), at the same rate, you could give them almost £265,000 when they reach 18. 

Now that's a gift worth having!

Children have their own personal allowance, so for the majority there will be no tax to pay on their savings interest. 

However, parents should be aware that there may be a tax liability to themselves on the interest earned on any money they gift to their children, until they reach the age of 18. 

If the gross interest earned is less than £100 for each parent's gift, it will be treated as the child’s under a 'de minimis' rule. 

This means that provided the interest earned does not make the child a taxpayer, they will be able to offset this against their personal tax allowance, so it will often be free of tax. 

But if the interest is more than £100 for each parent's gift, then it will be treated as that parent’s interest for tax purposes and therefore they may need to pay tax at their marginal rate - if it takes them above their Personal Allowance and/or Personal Savings Allowance.

Gifts from any other family members or friends will not be viewed in the same way. Instead, any interest earned will be treated as belonging to the child themselves and therefore can be earned tax free if they are non-taxpayers.

The exception to this rule is on funds deposited into a JISA, Child Trust Fund or NS&I Premium Bonds.  The returns from these are tax free for all.

Be the first to get Breaking News

Install the Sky News app for free