New food product consumer's behaviour: Health literacy and neophobia

Abstract

Background

The development of a new food product aims to respond to consumer´s

concerns related to food and health promotion. Education plays a fundamental

role in consumer’s behavior by providing tools that allows them to make

informed decisions. Consumer’s empowerment is essential to the success of a

health promotion strategy, also the knowledge of health literacy level is

important to define a proper health policy. The aim of this study is to evaluate

health literacy level and new foods consumption behavior (especially

neophobic and neophilic behavior) of the Lisbon area residents in Portugal.

Methods

A questionnaire, that includes the Portuguese version of the Newest Vital Sign,

was applied to a stratified sample of 384 individuals (over 15 years old) living in

the Lisbon area in Portugal distributed accordingly to 2001 Census. Health

literacy was evaluated by the Portuguese version of NVS, a tool by which a

number of health-related information, in this case nutritional information

written in a food label, is used to demonstrate one’s ability to use it to answer

to questions. Data analysis was performed in SPSS®, version 19.

Results

Study results show that there is a close relationship between health literacy and general literacy. It is also

clear that health literacy level is low for the majority of the participants and that this factor is relevant in new

foods consumption, by positively affecting neophilia. Older individuals, with lower school years attendance

and health literacy, are the main consumers with neophobic behavior. Higher health literacy is also directly

associated with consumers concerns on how the product was manufactured and on environmental

characteristics. There is no statistical association between gender and health literacy, but it is of relevance the

fact that an association between health literacy and food neophilia is statistically significant.

Conclusion

Considering that new food products may improve health and diet aspects of a population, our findings allow

us to conclude that educational strategies are needed to improve health literacy and consequently food

neophilia, especially in the older population with lower school years attendance. Significant determinants of

the acceptance of novel food products include: educational level, health literacy level and age.