Functional Drink Consumption of Bangkok Residents, Thailand

Abstract

Background: Functional drink is a prominent product category under the functional food sector. Health benefit belief from functional foods emerges as the strongest positive determinant of willingness to consume functional drink.  Functional food and drink beverages exhibit 62.8 and 61.2%, the largest share value of Thailand health and wellness industry in 1020 and 2012 respectively. Most common ingredients in these functional drinks are sugar, fructose and maltitol which are the source of carbohydrate. These ingredients have some negative effects on human body if consume frequently. Therefore, this study examined the pattern of consumption of functional drinks of Bangkok residents, Thailand.

Methods: A descriptive study was conducted. The procedures of data collection were self-reported by using structured questionnaire. The survey was conducted among adult of Thai nationalists (N=568) for both male and female with age range of 18 to 65 years in metropolitan area of Bangkok. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were measured to investigate the pattern of consumption of functional drinks.

Results: Majority of the respondents were female in this study. About half (49.3%) of the study population were moderately interested about functional drinks. Majority of the respondents (89.6%) stated that they learned about the functional drinks from television. As a reason to choose any kind of functional drinks 46.8% of the respondents mentioned “for better health”.

Conclusions: It has been observed that majority of the respondents (88.4%) consumed functional drinks at least once in their life. Media campaign about these sugary functional drinks would be effective for raising awareness about added sugars in functional drinks, increasing knowledge about health problems associated with excessive sugar consumption.