TITLE:
Food Choice Behaviour of Chinese Consumers in Shenyang, Liaoning Province
AUTHORS:
Roseline Love MacArthur, Yuehua Wang, Xuqiao Feng
KEYWORDS:
Nutrition Labelling Awareness, Food Choice Behaviour, Negative Nutrition Factors, China
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.6 No.9,
September
1,
2015
ABSTRACT: The aim of the study
was to investigate consumers’ use of nutrition claims and to determine the food
choice behaviour of Chinese consumers based on the nutrient content of packaged
foods. A cross-sectional descriptive research approach was followed. Combined
stratified and random sampling methods were used to select 400 adult literate
consumers involved in packaged food purchases from international chain
supermarkets and other popular shops in Shenyang in Liaoning Province,
North-East of China. Data were collected with questionnaires and analysed with
both descriptive and inferential statistics. The results indicated that none of
the respondents could interpret “salt free”, only 6.0% understood “reduced
sugar” and 70% were sceptical about such claims. A total of 53.8% and 64.4% of
the respondents neither understood the term or knew their RDA respectively,
even though familiarity with these had implication for food consumption.
Respondents’ use of information on calorie (Mean = 3.003, Std. Dev. = 1.248),
sugar (Mean = 3.151, Std. Dev. = 1.175) and fat (Mean = 3.175, Std. Dev. =
1.202) content affected their food choices “sometimes” while salt content
“rarely” (Mean = 2.803, Std. Dev. = 1.193) did. While the highest level
education showed no significance, health status was significantly and
negatively correlated with low-calorie (r = ?0.094, p