Crafting and applying a tool to assess food literacy: Findings from a pilot study

Abstract

Background: Food literacy could be depicted as the set of functional, interactive and critical skills which are required to navigate the food system properly. Scholars have widely investigated the conceptual attributes of food literacy, arguing that it consists of the ability to plan and manage food, select and choice food, and prepare and consume food. However, to the authors' knowledge, still little is known on the assessment of food literacy skills. Recent developments suggest that inadequate food literacy could be depicted as a silent epidemic, affecting a large part of the world population. From this point of view, there is a desperate need for reliable measurement tools aimed at assessing food literacy skills. Scope and approach: Drawing on the European Health Literacy Survey, this review suggests a self-reporting assessment tool aimed at measuring individual food literacy skills. A concept-validation approach was used to design the survey. It was tested on a convenience sample of 158 Italian citizens. A correlation analysis allowed to shed light on the correlates of food literacy skills. Findings and conclusions: A large part of the sample revealed problematic food literacy skills. In particular, most of respondents were found to live with inadequate ability to plan, manage, select and consume food. People living with primary education and those belonging to the lower social classes of the population were more likely to show limited food literacy. Problematic food literacy was also found to be related with poor health status and overweight.