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Generally, food intake of older consumers is not in line with dietary guidelines. Insight into personal health-related motive orientations (HRMO) in this target group is useful for developing tailored interventions that support healthy food consumption, a better understanding is needed. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify older consumer groups based on HRMO; and second, to compare their consumption of different food groups and functionalities associated with a main meal.

An online survey was filled out by 459 Dutch adults aged 55–90 years (mean age=68.2 years), of the Sento network including 800 vital community-dwelling older consumers.

Analysis revealed five clusters of older adults with different HRMO profiles: appearance and achievement oriented, active oriented, altruistic oriented, achievement oriented and less health oriented. In addition, these segments differ in importance of functionalities associated with a main meal, i.e., physical, pleasure or rewarding, and in the consumption of specific food groups, i.e., unprocessed meat, meat replacers and unsalted nuts.

Recommendations for interventions and communication strategies to support healthy food consumption in the different HRMO segments are presented.

This exploration showed that different segments of Dutch older adults can be identified based on HRMO. Between these segments there are differences in consumption of protein-rich food groups and functionalities associated with a main meal.