Perception of fried foods and consumption behavior among Thai people aged 18-60 years old

Abstract

Fried food is very popular in all ages. Eating fried foods that are not properly fried increases health risks while properly fried foods are beneficial to the body. The objective of this study was to study perceptions, attitudes and behaviors of fried food consumption and to study factors affecting fried food consumption behavior. This study is a survey research study of people aged 18-60 who have access to the Internet. Data was collected with an online questionnaire, Google Form, examined by 3 experts. There were 503 respondents in this study, most of them were female (71.60%), age group 31-40 years old (25.00%). Majority of respondents graduated with a bachelor's degree (57.10%), worked as a full-time employee / state enterprise / civil servant (33.20%). Most of them have a monthly income of 20,001 -40,000 baht (37.00%). Most of them cooked their own meals less than 3 times a week, 49.90% received information about health care from social media/internet 78.50. The respondents had a moderate perception of fried food consumption at 47.20%, good attitude towards fried food consumption at 88.80%, and a good level of fried food consumption behavior score at 58.05%. From the analysis of predictive factors for fried food consumption behavior, it was found that age (Beta = 0.143, p-value < 0.01), awareness about fried food (Beta = 0.111, p-value < 0.01), and attitude toward fried food consumption (Beta =0.428, p-value < 0.01) were statistically significant predictors of behavior. Respondents have a perception about fried food and safe fried food consumption behavior regarding general knowledge about the characteristics of fried food and diseases caused by eating fried food, and not reusing frying oil. They lack awareness and practice about frying food safely, how frequently they can eat fried foods, carcinogen produced by frying.  Therefore, the specific knowledge of how to cook and eat fried food safely should be educated to consumers.