Everyday Eating: What Drives Consumer's Food Decisions?

Abstract

A web-based interactive tool for use by nutrition educators that illustrates the numerous factors that influence consumer food purchasing decisions, including nutrition, cost, convenience, taste, food safety, shelf-life, and food waste. Nutrition Educators. Following the release of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) government officials and the public health community desired measurable improvements in the dietary patterns of Americans. A new web-based application tool for use by nutrition educators was developed that evaluates trade-offs between product attributes for food selection decision making. Foods with a home recipe version in the USDA Food and Nutrition Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS) or the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (SR) were selected to represent a range of commonly consumed entrees, side dishes, fruits, vegetables, baked products, desserts, and beverages. Over 108 unique foods with home recipe and one or more processed forms are available for comparison. The web-based tool allows nutrition educators to compare individual foods or a daily diet constructed from foods in this database. Opportunities and application for nutrition educators emerging from the web-based tool will be presented on the poster. Menu modeling of one day diets using examples of select food pairings will be presented including the analysis of the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) scoring. This project presents data that looks at all factors involved in meal preparation. The web-based application tool will provide quantifiable research to advance public health through the identification of multiple pathways for optimizing food patterns in alignment with current dietary guidance.