Abstract
The childhood obesity epidemic is often attributed to the widespread marketing of High Fat, Salt and Sugar (HFSS) foods. Currently, there is a lack of vegetable-based New Product Development (NPD) targeting adolescent consumers. The study aimed to investigate adolescents’ willingness to incorporate three vegetables: cauliflower, potatoes and cabbage into vegetable-based snack products. Two participatory design research sessions were conducted with Welsh adolescents aged 12- to 13-years-old (n=41). The adolescents undertook three activities: (1) listing snack products currently eaten; (2) determining foods they associated with cauliflower, potatoes and cabbage; and, (3) designing a new vegetable-based snack product. Abductive thematic analysis resulted in four themes: taste preferences, commercial branding, convenience, and health consciousness. Developing healthy vegetable-based snack products could potentially improve the dietary quality of adolescents. This is one of the first participatory design research studies to include adolescents in the NPD process for healthy snack products.
Highlights
Promotional marketing techniques encouraging the overconsumption of HFSS foods and contemporary Western ‘Obesogenic’ environments with prevalent junk food outlets, price promotions and sweets at checkouts are often blamed as a major contributing factor to the childhood obesity epidemic (Birch & Ventura, 2009; Lake & Townshend, 2006)
This participatory design research was unable to clarify why females have these taste preferences, it may prove interesting to see how male and female adolescents’ designs differ The transitionary period of adolescence is important for physiological growth and psychological cognitive development, can be problematic because increased autonomy may lead to unhealthful food consumption (Bassett, Chapman, & Beagan, 2008; Viner et al, 2015)
The four themes that abductively emerged from the thematic analysis were: taste preferences, commercial branding, convenience, and health consciousness
Summary
Promotional marketing techniques encouraging the overconsumption of HFSS foods and contemporary Western ‘Obesogenic’ environments with prevalent junk food outlets, price promotions and sweets at checkouts are often blamed as a major contributing factor to the childhood obesity epidemic (Birch & Ventura, 2009; Lake & Townshend, 2006). 8% of 11- to 18year-olds meet the 5-A-Day UK governmental fruit and vegetable consumption guideline, with the average daily fruit and vegetable portions being 2.8 (Public Health England and Food Standards Agency, 2016). Research has demonstrated that female adolescents prefer the taste of fruit and vegetables and eat on average 14.5 portions weekly in comparison to males who eat 11.9 portions (Bere, Brug, & Klepp, 2008) This participatory design research was unable to clarify why females have these taste preferences, it may prove interesting to see how male and female adolescents’ designs differ The transitionary period of adolescence is important for physiological growth and psychological cognitive development, can be problematic because increased autonomy may lead to unhealthful food consumption (Bassett, Chapman, & Beagan, 2008; Viner et al, 2015). The results in this conference paper are part of a larger research project
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