Emerging adults’ food media experiences: Preferences, opportunities, and barriers for food literacy promotion

Abstract

This study aims to understand how and why emerging adults come into contact with food media messages, and what they perceive as positive and negative outcomes related to food literacy. Seven focus groups, stratified by gender and socio-economic status, with 37 emerging adults aged between 18 and 25 were conducted. Photovoice was used to reflect on participants’ real-life food media experiences. Findings reveal that food media consumption is a combination of actively searching and incidentally encountering. The results suggest that food media messages attract emerging adults’ attention by bringing content in an entertaining, engaging, and appealing way, and featuring popular food personalities. Finally, food media messages were perceived to both enhance and distort food literacy. The results show how food media messages for food literacy interventions can be designed in order to attract emerging adults’ attention and fulfill their specific needs.

How are food influencers' recipes promoting food literacy? Investigating nutritional content, food literacy and communication techniques in Instagram recipes

“…However, previous research has mainly focused on investigating how emerging adults perceive social media recipes (e.g. Wang et al, 2022), from which we can also deduce how recipes may contribute to food literacy (Decorte et al, 2022;Steils and Obaidalahe, 2020;Teunissen et al, 2023;Vaterlaus et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2022). Here, the research found that emerging adults perceive recipes on social media as an important source of education related to various food literacy components (i.e.…”

“…Within this specific demographic, recipe-related content from food influencers (i.e. food celebrities who focus primarily on food-related topics; Goodman and Jaworska, 2020) has been found to be popular (Bramston et al, 2020;Teunissen et al, 2023). However, the extent to which this recipe-related content from food influencers reflects the different aspects of food literacy remains unclear.…”

“…food celebrities who focus primarily on food-related topics; Goodman and Jaworska, 2020) has been found to be popular (Bramston et al. , 2020; Teunissen et al. , 2023).…”

“…, 2022), from which we can also deduce how recipes may contribute to food literacy (Decorte et al. , 2022; Steils and Obaidalahe, 2020; Teunissen et al. , 2023; Vaterlaus et al.…”

From food media entertainment to food literacy education : an investigation into food media content, food media exposure, and food literacy among emerging adults

“…Emerging adults often face barriers such as insufficient resources and the unavailability of required ingredients or kitchen materials to prepare meals (Howse et al, 2018;Malan et al, 2020;Sogari et al, 2018). Additionally, they often experience that available recipes may require ingredients or kitchen materials that are not readily available (Teunissen et al, 2023), as such it is necessary for emerging adults to learn how to make meals with the resources they have available and to adapt recipes as needed (e.g., substitute ingredients or modify cooking methods based on what they have available).…”