Healthiness, naturalness and sustainability perception of adolescents toward chocolate snack bars

Abstract

PurposeAdolescence is a period in which autonomy grows and where children develop into independent and active consumers and a period in which their food choices are also becoming more autonomous. Snacking is known to increase during the period of adolescence and the snack choice of adolescents is often unhealthy. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to know when adolescents perceive a snack as healthy. As healthiness perception could be linked to the perception of naturalness and sustainability of a snack, these are interesting product characteristics to study as well.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews with 20 adolescents were conducted to characterize their perception of healthiness, naturalness and sustainability. Chocolate snack bars were used as a stimulus product.FindingsAll participants mentioned consuming snacks because they like them. Healthiness was seen as important but was not always a priority in adolescents' snack choices. Naturalness and sustainability were concepts which the adolescents were not aware of or did not perceive as important during snack choice. The adolescents mentioned experiencing natural products to be healthier compared to not natural products. The consequences of the discerned dimensions time, impact and effect of choices were rather limited for this target group.Originality/valueUnderstanding the healthiness, naturalness and sustainability perception of chocolate snack bars by adolescents may help to better understand drivers for adolescents' snack choices.

Nutritional Labelling and Purchase Intention

“…Thirdly, the relationship between the negation of perceived healthiness for young men is presented, it determines the negation of purchase intention. In this case, the results align us with those that indicate that healthiness is not a priority in the choice of food for young people (Damen et al, 2022), or how generation Z shows less interest in the healthiness of the products they consume (Arenas-Gaitán et al, 2022). Fourthly, there is a coexistence of the negation of perceived healthiness and older age for males, conjunction that shows the relevance of perceived healthiness as a determinant of the denial of purchase intention.…”

“…The evaluation of health claims is determined, in part, by the perceived healthiness of a product (Plasek et al, 2020). Perceived healthiness is the consumers' perception or expectation of the influence that consuming a specific product has on their health (Da Silva et al, 2022;Francioni et al, 2022;Samoggiea, 2016), a relative concept established in relation to other products (Damen et al, 2022). Perceived healthiness is determined by six categories of elements (Da Silva et al, 2022;Lin et al, 2017;Plasek et al, 2020): communication information; product category, the shape and colour of the product packaging, the ingredients of the product, the organic origin of the product, and the taste and other sensory features of the product.…”

“…However, Nutri-Score is best understood by young population (Egnell et al, 2018;Sarda et al, 2020). Health is important, but not a priority in the choice of certain categories of products for young people (Damen et al, 2022).…”

How Natural Are the “Natural” Materials? Proposal for a Quali-Quantitative Measurement Index of Naturalness in the Environmental Sustainability Context

“…However, many authors [8,23] analyse the perception of materials and products, considering the aspect of naturalness, and define naturalness as crucial for product environmental sustainability perception: in fact, it is often associated with positive qualities, and it probably makes a difference in the decision processes of consumers. Naturalness has also been used as an added value of physical food products [24,25] or as a validation tool of the effectiveness of ecosystem management [26], but no prior studies have defined a method to measure the materials' naturalness. Starting from this controversial situation caused by the aforementioned issues, the present contribution addresses the need to evaluate the materials' naturalness, which is so far lacking in the scientific literature.…”

“…In the Product Design field, other authors [49] analysed how the material perception of naturalness influences users' choice when selecting products, or [8,50] the perceived degree of naturalness through the sensory interaction (touch/vision) with materials (i.e., textiles), and others [9] investigated how colour compositions are perceived as natural. In studies related to the food field [24,25,51,52], naturalness has been defined as correlated to the perceptions of product quality; it has been also investigated [53] as a factor impacted by visual, tactile, and auditory cues or strictly correlated with elements such as how the food is grown and processed, the contagion of the raw material, or which ingredients that are used. Moreover, the impact of packaging and the role of perceptual interactions have been defined as crucial in the food's expected naturalness [54].…”