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The purpose of this paper is to explore the associations between food literacy, consumer profiling and purchasing behaviour in a sample of Italian consumers.

Participants (N = 194) completed an online survey including personal data, two questionnaires on purchase behaviour and food consumption, the General Trust Scale (GTS), a questionnaire assessing individual chronotype and two scales about food literacy: one investigating nutritional knowledge (short food literacy questionnaire, SFLQ) and the other focussing on procedural skills (self-perceived food literacy scale, SPFL). Associations between food literacy, consumer profiling and purchase behaviour were analysed with linear regression models.

Participants with specific education in nutrition reported higher scores in food literacy. The final score of food literacy was predicted by a greater attention to nutritional content and nutritional properties of products. Women paid more attention to nutritional properties than men, and they obtained higher scores in SFLQ. Evening types obtained lower scores in SFPL compared to intermediate and morning chronotypes. Body mass index (BMI) was negatively correlated to SPFL score, while it was associated with the easy availability of a product, so that obese (BMI ≥ 30) subjects considered the easy availability of a product more important compared to non-obese ones (BMI < 30).

This study investigates the influence of personal and psychometric variables of consumer profiling on food literacy and consequently on purchase behaviour, paving the way for implementing healthier food consumption policies. These findings reinforce the primacy of specific education in building healthy eating habits.

Health literacy is a key international public health goal. Conceptualising health literacy as an asset highlights the importance of fostering a health literate youth for the benefit of future generations, yet research has predominantly focused on examining adults’ and older adolescents’ health literacy. This presents a gap for child-centred studies with younger populations. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from a qualitative study that explored health literacy, in a nutrition context (i.e. nutrition literacy), from primary school children’s perspectives.

The study examined children’s experiences in accessing, understanding and interacting with nutrition information. In doing so, the research employed a socio-ecological framework to understand facilitators and barriers that can influence children’s nutrition literacy. Preadolescent boys and girls aged 11–12 years were invited to take part in the study. At the time of recruitment, students were attending one of three state government schools in a socioeconomically disadvantaged region of metropolitan South Australia. A series of focus groups and individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 38 participants. Interview data were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic techniques.

Children demonstrated that they accessed and interacted with a variety of sources of nutrition information. Nutrition understandings were derived from the home, school and media environments. Parents and teachers were cited as key influences on children’s interactions with nutrition information and children particularly emphasised the trust placed in their teachers as health “experts.” While the home and school environments emerged as potential settings to develop children’s nutrition literacy skills, the children’s narratives also alluded to potential barriers surrounding nutrition literacy.

This study provides further insight into children’s nutrition literacy. While functional nutrition literacy remains a fundamental starting point, children are interested in opportunities to develop more interactive skills, such as those related to cooking. Opportunities also exist to foster more critical competencies. This research thereby highlights the importance of more integrated strategies to promote nutrition literacy among this population group across multiple settings.

Food literacy is an emerging concept associated with the skills, capabilities and knowledge to prepare a healthy diet and make healthy food choices. This study aims to examine how a dietary gatekeeper’s intentions to prepare a healthy diet for their family, and the subsequent satisfaction that a healthy diet is achieved, is influenced by their food literacy and by barriers to healthy eating.

A two-stage cross-sectional study was undertaken with 756 dietary gatekeepers who completed a baseline (time 1) and a three-month follow-up (time 2) questionnaire. Partial least square-structural equation modeling was used to estimate relationships between gatekeeper food literacy, their demographic characteristics, socio-cognitive factors, time 1 satisfaction with the healthiness of the household diet and intention to provide a healthy family diet. The follow-up survey assessed subsequent satisfaction with the healthiness of the household diet and barriers to achieving it.

The results highlight the significance of the dietary gatekeeper’s food literacy in overcoming barriers to healthy eating and fostering increased satisfaction with the healthiness of the family diet. The research further highlights the influence of past satisfaction, attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. Several demographics factors are also highlighted as influential.

The research offers new insights into the role of food literacy in the home environment including its influence on the dietary gatekeeper’s satisfaction with the family diet. The current model also provides strong evidence that food literacy can reduce the impact of barriers to healthy eating experienced by gatekeepers. The research has limitations associated with the socio-economic status of respondents and thus offers scope for research into different populations and their food literacy, younger and early formed cohabiting and the negotiation of food and dietary responsibility and on intergenerational food literacy.

The current findings regarding the impact of food literacy have significant implications for government agencies, non-profit agencies, educational institutions and other related stakeholders in their effort to curb obesity. Implications exist for micro-level programmes and actions designed to influence gatekeepers, family members and households and at the macro level for policies and programmes designed to influence the obesogenicity of the food environments.

The current study is one of the first to offer evidence on the role of food literacy in the home environment and its ability to overcome barriers to healthy eating. The research provides social marketers and public policymakers with novel insights regarding the need for increased food literacy and for developing interventions to improve food literacy in dietary gatekeepers.

Explore what popular food influencers among Flemish emerging adults portray in their Instagram recipe posts in terms of (1) references to food literacy, (2) nutritional value, (3) rational and emotional appeals and (4) the relation between the nutritional value and rational/emotional appeals.

A content and nutritional analysis of Instagram recipe posts from seven food influencers (N = 166).

Findings reveal that food influencers rarely embed references to food literacy in their recipe posts, especially regarding meal planning, food selection, meal consumption and evaluating food-related information. Only in 28.9% of the posts information was given on how to prepare a recipe. Second, 220 recipes were included in the 166 recipe posts, of which the majority (65%) were main course meals that met at least six of the 11 nutrient criteria for a healthy main meal (67.2%). Finally, food influencers promote their recipe posts as positive narratives, focusing on the tastiness (66%) and convenience (40.9%) of meals.

This is the first study to evaluate what food influencers post nutritionally in their Instagram recipes, as well as how they promote these recipes. Health promotors should note the influential role of food influencers and seek ways to collaborate to provide information on how food literacy cues can be embedded in influencers' communications and provide insights into how influencers' recipes can be optimised.

This study identifies new factors influencing the adoption of two recently promoted messages in Canada's updated food guide (FG): enhancing pleasure of eating healthy foods (PEHFs) and shifting food choices towards plant protein foods. Currently, limited and contradictory evidence is available regarding associations between environmental values, nutrition literacy, PEHFs, and plant/animal protein food consumption.

An online survey measuring environmental values; nutrition literacy, distinctively based on previous (2007) and most recent (2019) FG messages; PEHFs; and annual changes in the consumption of protein foods was sent to Quebec residents (N = 128).

Greater nutrition literacy of both 2007 and 2019 FGs and greater environmental values were associated with greater PEHFs (ß = 0.248, p < 0.01; ß = 0.209, p < 0.05; ß = 0.423, p < 0.001, respectively). Greater PEHFs was associated with greater consumption of plant protein foods (ß = 0.405, p < 0.001). Greater nutrition literacy of the 2007 FG was associated with greater consumption of animal protein foods (ß = 0.409, p < 0.001), whereas greater nutrition literacy of the 2019 FG was linked to lower consumption of animal protein foods (ß = −0.225, p < 0.05).

Enhancing PEHFs may require increasing general FG nutrition literacy and strengthening environmental values. To encourage plant protein food consumption and decrease animal protein food consumption, the authors recommend promoting PEHFs and increasing nutrition literacy based on newest FG recommendations.

This new evidence may help develop strategies promoting PEHFs and plant protein food consumption, thus increasing uptake of new FG recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the food system professionals’ opinions of a new senior secondary school food literacy curriculum named Victorian Certificate of Education Food Studies in Victoria, Australia.

A purposive sample of 34 food system professionals from different sub-sectors within the Australian food system was interviewed individually in late 2015 and early 2016. Interviews were analysed using the template analysis technique.

Most participants appreciated the extensive coverage of food literacy aspects in this new curriculum. However, many suggested amendments to the curriculum including pay less emphasis on food history-related topics and pay more focus on primary food production, nutrition awareness and promotion, and food security, food sovereignty, social justice, and food politics.

A well-structured, comprehensive secondary school food literacy curriculum could play a crucial role in providing food literacy education for adolescents. This will help them to establish healthy food patterns and become responsible food citizens. The findings of this study can be used to modify the new curriculum to make it a more comprehensive, logical, and feasible curriculum. Moreover, these findings could be used to inform the design of new secondary school food literacy curricula in Australia and other countries.

The exploration of perspectives of professionals from a broad range of food- and nutrition-related areas about school food literacy education makes this study unique. This study highlights the importance of food professionals’ opinions in secondary school food-related curricula development.

The purpose of this paper is to explore associations between different food literacy dimensions and diet quality among a sample of Canadian parents and examine differences in the prevalence of food literacy items between mothers and fathers.

Parents responsible for food preparation (n=767) completed an online survey including dietary intakes and 22 items across five dimensions of food literacy (knowledge, planning, cooking, food conceptualisation and social aspects). Differences between genders for each item were analysed with χ² tests. The healthy eating index (HEI) adapted to the Canadian Food Guide (CFG) was computed from a food frequency questionnaire. Associations between HEI scores and each item were analysed with linear regression models, controlling for sociodemographic variables and multiple testing.

Of parents responsible for food preparation, 81 per cent were mothers. The mean HEI score was 76.6 (SD: 10.6) and mothers reported healthier diets in comparison to fathers (p=0.01). More mothers than fathers used CFG recommendations, selected foods based on nutrition labels, made soups, stews, muffins and cakes from scratch and added fruits and vegetables to recipes (p<0.05). More fathers reduced the salt content of recipes than mothers (p=0.03). Two knowledge items and seven food conceptualisation items were significantly associated with better HEI, after controlling for covariates and multiple testing. Planning items, cooking skills and social aspects were not significantly associated with HEI.

This study investigates multiple dimensions of food literacy and identifies knowledge and food conceptualisation as potential targets for future interventions involving parents responsible for household meal preparation. This study highlights the importance of considering gender differences in food literacy.

This study aims to investigate the influence of religiosity (intrinsic and extrinsic) and halal literacy on the intention of Muslim consumers to purchase halal branded food products in India. An extended version of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was used as a framework. Apart from religiosity and halal literacy, the influence of attitude, social norms and perceived behavioural control of halal on buying intention were also tested.

The study uses a survey design. The data were collected from 350 individual respondents, using a closed-ended, structured questionnaire. The quality of the measurement model has been assessed through reliability testing, factor loading, average variance extracted and Fornell-Larcker criterion. The test of hypotheses was conducted by performing the partial least square structural equation modelling.

The result of hypotheses testing shows that both intrinsic and extrinsic types of religiosities did not have a direct influence on buying intention. However, religiosity (extrinsic and intrinsic) and halal literacy have significant relationships with most of the antecedents of the intention of the TPB. In addition, both kinds of religiosities (extrinsic and intrinsic) and halal literacy had a significant indirect effect (through TPB antecedents) on buying intention.

Muslim population in India is one of the largest in the world, yet there is a lack of popular halal branded food products in the market. Nevertheless, few researchers have attempted to study the consumer behaviour of the Muslim population for halal products in India. A large amount of research work on halal food behaviour is from countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, where the Muslim population is in the majority and halal brands are already popular. Further, this paper studies the impact of dimensions of religiosity, which has been overlooked by researchers studying the halal food purchasing behaviour. The study also explores the impact of halal literacy, an understudied construct in halal marketing literature. The present study is amongst the earliest empirical research based on Muslim consumers in India on the topic of halal branded food products.

Implementation of a new food literacy curriculum provides multiple health and social benefits to school students. The success of any new curriculum execution is partly determined by teachers’ perceptions about the new curriculum contents, and barriers and challenges for its delivery. The purpose of this paper is to explore teachers’ views of a new food literacy curriculum named Victorian Certificate of Education Food Studies for senior secondary school students in Victoria, Australia.

A qualitative study design was used in this study. In total, 14 teachers who were planning to teach the new curriculum were individually interviewed in October-December 2016. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using the template analysis technique.

The majority of teachers appreciated the inclusion of food literacy and nutrition concepts in the new curriculum. However, half of the teachers had doubts about their readiness to teach it. Most teachers mentioned that they needed more training and resources to increase their confidence in teaching the curriculum.

These findings reveal that teachers need more awareness, resources, and guidance to increase their confidence in delivering the new curriculum. Provision of more resources and opportunities for training in food literacy concepts and instructional methods could facilitate its implementation.

These findings serve as an important first step to gain the perspectives of secondary school teachers’ opinions about the new curriculum. Moreover, these opinions and suggestions could inform the future design and implementation of similar food literacy curricula in Australia or elsewhere.

This study investigates the effects of sustainable design on food policy, literacy, and socialisation to gauge consumers' satisfaction with the general design of food well-being (FWB).

Using data from an online survey with 382 respondents, an empirical study applying composite-based structural equation modelling was conducted. Sustainable design for food socialisation was hypothesised to directly influence consumers' satisfaction with the general design of FWB, whereas food policy was assumed to have an emergent effect on food literacy. Gender was a control variable used to identify the heterogeneity of the effects.

The results demonstrated that sustainable design for food policy and food literacy positively influence food socialisation and affect consumers' satisfaction with the sustainable design for FWB. Additionally, women exhibited higher application of food knowledge and skills but less experience in FWB than men.

To the best of the authors knowledge, this study is the first to examine the emergent influence of food policy from a design perspective, with implications for industrial practitioners, policymakers, and academic research. This study also provides possible avenues for future sustainability and food product design research.