Social representations of dietary practices and their determinants in a Moroccan community

Abstract

Food is a multidimensional science that has appeal among other social representations of food practices. This study aimed to characterize and identify the determinants of eating practices according to the social representations of a population in the Rabat-Salé-Kenitra (RSK) region of Morocco. Data concerning socio-demographic characteristics were collected using a questionnaire. The social representations of dietary practices were obtained by characterizing three dietary practices. The main results showed that the high proportion of the study population is over 34 years old, is female, is married, and resides in the urban area. The most characteristic of good dietary practices chosen by the majority of the population was palatability, the factor chosen as the least characteristic of good dietary practices was traditional preparations. Among the studied factors, age, gender, higher level of education, professional occupation, "married" marital status, and involvement in purchasing and food preparation within the household are the determinants of certain representations.

Validation of conceptual and methodological framework for the study of dietary practices and nutritional status of an adult population

“…This results in three nonselected items (NS) for each respondent. A code was assigned to each characterization: code (1) for the least characteristic items, code (2) for the non-selected items, and code (3) for the most characteristic items [20,39].…”