Consumers' Potentials to Adopt a Healthy Eating Lifestyle

Abstract

Unambiguously, nowadays healthy eating patterns have attracted the interest of researchers, society and media. Mainly four key widespread messages “eat less fat”, “eat less sugar”, “eat less salt” and “eat more fibre”, are among those widely perceived as healthy eating behavior. All those messages could support a healthy eating lifestyle, and consequently, avoid several chronic diseases and health problems. This research aimed to examine consumers' attitudes towards healthy eating, their difficulty to adopt a permanent healthy eating style and to assess which items consumers find more or less difficult to follow. The Rasch model was applied to assess the obstacles consumers are facing to adopt and follow healthy eating patterns and to relate them with a range of attitudinal and socio-economic factors faced by individuals. Results highlight significant differences among consumers in adopting healthy eating patterns, depending on the level of several key factors (gender, age and education).