Associations between motives for dish choice during home-meal preparation and diet quality in French adults: findings from the NutriNet-Santé study

Abstract

A number of motives such as constraints or pleasure have been suggested to influence dish choices during home-meal preparation. However, no study has evaluated how the importance conferred to these motives potentially influence diet quality. The present study aims at investigating the difference in diet quality according to the importance attached by individuals to various dish choice motives. The importance of twenty-seven criteria related to dish choices on weekdays was evaluated among 48 010 French adults from the NutriNet-Santé study. ANCOVA and logistic regression models, adjusted for sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, were used to evaluate the association between the importance attached to dish choice motives (yes v. no) and energy and food group intakes, as well as adherence to French nutritional guidelines (modified Programme National Nutrition Santé-Guideline Score (mPNNS-GS)). A higher adherence to nutritional guidelines was observed in individuals attaching importance to a healthy diet (mPNNS-GS score 7·87 (sd 0·09) v. 7·39 (sd 0·09)) and specific diets (mPNNS-GS score 7·73 (sd 0·09) v. 7·53 (sd 0·09)), compared with those who attached little/no importance (all P<0·0001). These individuals also exhibited higher intakes of fruits and vegetables, but a lower consumption of meat, milk and cheese, sugary products and convenience foods compared with their respective counterparts (all P<0·0001). For other motives, that is, constraints, pleasure and organisation, only small differences were observed. The main difference in diet quality was related to the importance placed on a healthy diet. Although a causal link should be demonstrated, our findings suggested that strategies aiming at enabling people to take into account diet quality during home-meal preparation might be effective levers to promote healthy eating.

Can eating pleasure be a lever for healthy eating? A systematic scoping review of eating pleasure and its links with dietary behaviors and health

“…Tools used in these studies to measure eating pleasure are presented in Table 5. Eating pleasure was measured using a variety of tools, namely interviews (n = 2) [89,137], pairing and categorization tasks (n = 1) [26], single items (n = 11) [28,29,76,109,111,140,141,147,148,152,160], multi-item questionnaires developed by authors for the purpose of the study (n = 8) [21,74,112,136,145,148,150,156], adapted versions of existing multi-item questionnaires (n = 7) [13,[33][34][35]75,157,158] or existing multi-item questionnaires (n = 13) [21,25,27,30,36,74,84,86,88,125,126,146,151]. In total, 37 different tools were used to measure eating pleasure: 1 interview process, 2 pairing and categorization tasks, 15 single items and 19 questionnaires.…”

“…Dietary behavior and health outcomes for each study are presented in Table 5. Of the 45 studies identified, 31 (68.9%) included only dietary outcomes [7,13,[25][26][27][28][29]33,34,37,75,76,84,86,88,109,111,125,126,136,140,[145][146][147][148][150][151][152]159,160,161], 10 (22.2%) only health outcomes [30,35,36,74,89,112,137,[156][157][158] and 4 (8.9%) included both dietary and health outcomes [21,31,32,141].…”

“…The dietary outcomes studied were very diverse, the most studied being diet quality (i.e., food/dietary intakes, balanced diet, adherence to nutritional guidelines) (n = 13) [13,[27][28][29]32,33,84,86,109,140,148,150,160], food choices (n = 8) [7,26,84,86,125,147,148,160], portion size (n = 4) [21,32,37,159], and restrained eating (n = 4) [21,31,76,145]. Other dietary outcomes were assessed in two studies or less and comprized emotional eating (n = 2) [76,145], external eating (n = 2) [76,145], intuitive eating (n = 2) [31,126], perceived importance of family meals (n = 2) [75,111], food neophobia/fussiness (n = 2) [136,141], taste description ability (n = 2) [136,161], likelihood to try new food / recipes (n = 2) [32,136], cooking skills (n = 2) [136,…”

“…This new paradigm is supported by a growing body of research that has reported, using different study designs, favorable associations between eating pleasure and dietary and health outcomes. For example, various cross-sectional studies have linked higher eating pleasure to better nutritional status [25], healthier food choices [26][27][28], increased subjective diet-related quality of life [29] and decreased depressive symptoms [30]. Other studies of both short-term and long-term interventions using eating pleasure also observed promising results.…”

“…Authors suggested that focusing on eating pleasure can nurture lifelong healthy eating habits. However, other studies have observed a negative link between eating pleasure and diet quality [27,33,34] or body-mass index (BMI) [35,36]. In some cross-sectional studies, eating pleasure has been associated with the consumption of convenience food [33], late-night snaking [34], and has been identified as a factor motivating the consumption of sweets [13].…”