How health concerns impact functional food consumption, study

The study, published in the journal Food Quality and Preference, ​set out to shed light on the extent to which modern health worries (MHWs), negative affect (NA), and healthy lifestyles (HL) are relevant to consumers’ willingness to use functional foods in Taiwan through the mediator of consumers’ subjective health complaints (SHCs).

“Despite the burgeoning research on functional foods, at present little is known about the antecedents that have impacts on consumers’ attitudes toward and willingness to consume functional foods with SHCs as a mediating role,”​ wrote the researchers, who said their study aims to fill this gap and provides useful guidance for health authorities as well as functional food marketers.

Measurements​

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Data was collected from 633 Taiwanese consumers in April 2009 via a national self-reported questionnaire survey. The survey started by providing a brief description of the term ‘functional food’ as a food product that, in addition to its usual nutritional value, maintains or promotes health or decreases the risk of disease.

A number of different measurement scales were used to determine participants’ health concerns and attitudes.

The Modern Health Worries (MHWs) Scale was used to investigate the extent to which respondents were worried about particular aspects of modern life that could affect their health.

A version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) was used to determine negative affect (NA) by asking people how often they had felt scared, afraid, upset, distressed, and jittery.

The Healthy Lifestyle Scale was used to describe an individual’s way of living which relates to health, and included three sub-dimensions: natural food consumption, health care, and life equilibrium.

Data analysis​

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Researchers then used a ‘structural model’ to examine whether or not the proposed research framework with subjective health complaints as a mediator could have a better explanation of consumers’ attitudes toward functional foods.

“The results of this empirical data collected from Taiwan indicate that though people’s modern health worries do not have a bearing on their subjective health complaints, such worries indeed exert a direct impact on their attitudes toward functional foods, which in turn further influences their willingness to use functional foods,”​ wrote the researchers.

Healthy lifestyles should be encouraged, they said, adding that functional foods may contribute to a healthier lifestyle to reduce NA (negative affect) and to prevent peoples’ SHCs.

“By doing so, people could lead healthy lifestyles and the government could cut down on ample unnecessary waste of the precious health care resources. The empirical results and findings from this study are helpful to the government authorities, the marketers of functional foods, and the public,”​ they stated.

The researchers also noted that although functional foods “might be perceived as being less natural than conventional products as their manufacture process often involves modern food technology (such as adding, removing or modifying their ingredients), the marketers of such foods can promote them as a modern way to follow a health care lifestyle because they can either enhance physiological function or reduce disease risks.”​

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Source:

The mediating role of subjective health complaints on willingness to use selected functional foods​
Food Quality and Preference​ (2010)
doi: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2010.08.006
Authors: Chen, M-F.