The manifestation of health-consciousness in food preference and consumption among young people according to an empiric study

Horváth, Ágnes – Lajos, Attila – Szira, Zoltán – Varga, Erika

In our study we set out to find answers to the question of how today’s secondary schools students in Hungary assessed certain food products. We examined in the target group also the development of relationship between the preference of a certain product and its assessment from the health point of view. We assumed that both the preference and assessment of food for its effects on health were not only influenced by the gender of consumers but also by the type of the school attended and to a large extent by the development level of the region of domicile. In conclusion, young people had shown some signs of awareness of what is healthy eating and they had been able to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy foodstuffs, but their consumption was still significantly dominated by what they considered to be pleasant food. A possible consequence of this finding is that nearly a quarter of young people and a third of boys consider themselves suffering from overweight.

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