Understanding Meal Choices in Young Adults and Interactions with Demographics, Diet Quality, and Health Behaviors: A Discrete Choice Experiment

Our understanding of meal choices is limited by methodologies that do not account for the complexity of food choice behaviors. Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) rank choices in a decision-making context. This study aimed to rank the relative importance of influences on meal choices in young adults...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of nutrition 2021-08, Vol.151 (8), p.2361-2371
Main Authors: Livingstone, Katherine M, Abbott, Gavin, Lamb, Karen E, Dullaghan, Kate, Worsley, Tony, McNaughton, Sarah A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adults
Decision making
Demographics
Demography
Diet
diet quality
discrete choice experiment
eating behaviors
eating patterns
Education
Female
Females
Food
food choice
Food Preferences
Health Behavior
Humans
Logit models
Male
meal preference
Meals
Nutrition
Nutritional Status
Polls & surveys
Preferences
Sex
Socioeconomic factors
Studies
Subgroups
Taste
Weight
Young Adult
Young adults
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Summary:Our understanding of meal choices is limited by methodologies that do not account for the complexity of food choice behaviors. Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) rank choices in a decision-making context. This study aimed to rank the relative importance of influences on meal choices in young adults and examine interactions by subgroups. Adults (18–30 y) living in Australia were recruited via social media to complete an Internet-based DCE and survey. Participants were presented with 12 choice sets about a typical weekday meal, consisting of 5 attributes (taste, preparation time, nutrition content, cost, and quality). Diet quality (Dietary Guideline Index) was calculated from brief dietary questions. Conditional logit models ranked meal attributes, including interactions by sex, education, area-level disadvantage, diet quality, and weight status. In total, 577 adults (46% female, mean ± SD age 23.8 ± 3.8 y) completed the DCE and survey. Nutrition content was the most important influence on meal choice (B: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.31, 1.64), followed by cost (B: –0.75; 95% CI: –0.87, –0.63), quality (B: 0.58; 95% CI: 0.49, 0.67), taste (B: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.45, 0.65), and preparation time (B: –0.42; 95% CI: –0.52, –0.31). Females, those with higher diet quality, and those with a BMI (in kg/m2)
ISSN:0022-3166
1541-6100
DOI:10.1093/jn/nxab106