Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Food Systems
First Advisor
Jane Kolodinsky
Abstract
This dissertation presents a mixed methods analysis of the healthfulness perceptions of natural and ultra processed foods, exploring the so-called “health halo” effects of natural food. This exploratory sequential mixed methods analysis is presented in three separate research studies, including qualitative analysis of public comments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and quantitative analysis of survey data. The first study operationalizes the concept of natural food, through qualitative analysis of letters submitted to the FDA (in 2015-2016) in direct response to a request for public feedback on the criteria for “natural” food labeling in the U.S. This thematic analysis (presented in Chapter 2) presents conceptual models grounded in the data illustrating how the public’s descriptions of natural and less natural foods are related to the Nova classification system, which classifies food based on the extent of industrial processing and is used to identify ultra-processed food. Chapter 3 examines how often the key attributes of natural foods (ingredients, processing, wholeness, farming practices) are prioritized, relative to nutrient attributes (sugar, sodium, fat, food groups) when different stakeholders are defining “healthy” foods using a similar dataset of public comments submitted to the FDA (in 2016-2017). This quantitative content analysis of consumer and food industry views (Chapter 3) is followed by a second quantitative study (Chapter 4), which describes consumer knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to ultra-processed foods (UPF) in a sample of adults living in Vermont in 2022, and models the relationships between UPF perceptions and the criteria prioritized when identifying healthy foods in an online survey.
When describing food-health relationships, many people look beyond the nutrition panels on food products and list criteria associated with food naturalness including assessments of the ingredients, food production and processing practices, and considerations for whether any whole food is present. This dissertation’s findings suggest that a portion of the “health-halo” effects associated with natural foods are conceptually related to the Nova classification system, which is used to identify ultra-processed food, a category of food products associated with poor health outcomes in a growing body of epidemiological research. Innovative food labels have been proposed as a strategy to help the public identify UPF in the marketplace, and this dissertation’s findings suggest that labels based on Nova could present information about the extent of food processing in a manner that is well aligned with public perceptions of naturalness and healthiness. The results of this dissertation could therefore support future efforts to reduce UPF consumption by harnessing the public’s preferences and proclivities for natural, minimally processed, whole foods.
Language
en
Number of Pages
154 p.
Recommended Citation
Rose, Nick, "Beyond Nutrition Panels: A Mixed Methods Analysis Of The Healthfulness Perceptions Of Natural And Ultra-Processed Foods" (2024). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 1957.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/1957