(P20-099-24) The Relationship Between Nutrition Beliefs and Food Purchasing Priorities: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Objectives: Health beliefs inform health behaviors including dietary choices. Understanding how dietary beliefs influence priorities when purchasing food may assist with developing interventions to improve diet quality. The aim was to explore the relationship between beliefs about dietary moderation and balance/variety and food purchasing priorities in general and low-income samples of US adults.

Methods: Participants were recruited by a market research company. Eligible individuals were ≥18 years, did not work in healthcare, advertising, public relations, marketing, or market research, and were decision makers for household food choices. The general sample (GEN) was census-representative for age, income, gender, and US region (n=1182). The low-income (LI) sample contained individuals with limited income ( < $35,000) receiving federal benefits (n=506). Beliefs about moderating intake of added sugars, sodium, refined grains and saturated fats, and beliefs about dietary balance/variety were assessed through several questions with responses from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. Respondents were also asked to identify the most important factor influencing food purchasing. Chi-square tests were used to assess the association between beliefs about dietary moderation and balance/variety and the most important food purchasing attribute in each sample.

Results: Price (GEN 24% of the sample; LI 42%), flavor/taste (GEN 23%; LI 21%), high quality/premium food (GEN 13%; LI 6%), nutritional value (GEN 10%; LI 6%) and ingredients (GEN 6%; LI 5%) were the top five most frequently selected important attributes for food purchasing. In GEN, there was a significant association between purchasing attribute selected and balance/variety beliefs (p=0.02) and moderation beliefs (p=0.001). Those more strongly agreeing with statements about the importance of dietary moderation and balance/variety selected nutritional value as a priority more frequently than those who disagreed. In the LI sample, beliefs about balance/variety and moderation were not associated with food purchasing priorities.

Conclusions: Beliefs about dietary moderation and balance/variety were associated with food purchasing priorities in a general but not a low-income sample.

Funding Sources: American Heart Association and the Department of Nutritional Sciences, Penn State