Centro de Investigación Básica en Psicología, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de la República, Tristán Narvaja 1674, C.P. 11200, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Sensometrics and Consumer Science, Instituto Polo Tecnológico de Pando, Facultad de Química, Universidad de la República, By Pass de Rutas 8 y 101 s/n, C.P. 91000, Pando, Canelones, Uruguay.
Public Health Nutr. 2020 Nov;23(16):2932-2940. doi: 10.1017/S1368980020003158. Epub 2020 Sep 4.
To explore the conceptualisation of healthy food by citizens and how they judge the healthiness of ultra-processed foods.
Four focus groups were conducted using a semi-structured discussion guide. Focus group discussions were held about the concept of healthy food, what characterise a healthy product and healthiness perception of ultra-processed products. Transcripts of the focus groups were analysed following an inductive coding approach.
Uruguay, one of the Latin American countries with the highest prevalence of overweight and obesity.
Fifty-two adult Uruguayan participants, diverse in terms of gender, age, educational level and socio-economic status.
In agreement with previous studies on lay perceptions of healthy eating, the conceptualisation of healthy food was mainly focused on food characteristics. Although participants regarded lack of processing as a cue for healthiness, they did not categorise all ultra-processed products as unhealthy. Albeit some product categories were automatically regarded as unhealthy, participants considered that other categories could include healthy and unhealthy products. In such cases, they explicitly referred to several simplified cognitive strategies to judge whether an ultra-processed product is healthy or not. Results showed that participants tended to rely on simple cues, such as label design, nutrient claims, brand, price and country of origin as indicators of product healthiness.
Healthiness perception of ultra-processed products seems to be largely influenced by heuristics, which stresses the need to implement policies that make the potential negative effects of ultra-processed products salient.
探讨公民对健康食品的概念理解，以及他们如何判断超加工食品的健康程度。
采用半结构化讨论指南进行了 4 个焦点小组。焦点小组讨论了健康食品的概念、健康产品的特征以及对超加工产品健康程度的感知。对焦点小组的讨论记录进行了归纳式编码分析。
乌拉圭，超重和肥胖流行率最高的拉美国家之一。
52 名成年乌拉圭参与者，在性别、年龄、教育水平和社会经济地位方面存在多样性。
与先前关于普通民众对健康饮食看法的研究一致，对健康食品的概念理解主要集中在食品特征上。尽管参与者认为加工少是健康的标志，但他们并不将所有超加工产品都归类为不健康。尽管某些产品类别被自动视为不健康，但参与者认为其他类别可能包含健康和不健康的产品。在这种情况下，他们明确提到了几种简化的认知策略来判断超加工产品是否健康。结果表明，参与者倾向于依赖简单的线索，例如标签设计、营养声称、品牌、价格和原产国，作为产品健康程度的指标。
超加工产品健康程度的感知在很大程度上受到启发式的影响，这强调了需要实施政策，使超加工产品的潜在负面影响变得明显。
