Objective
To explore how professionally qualified, working Indian mothers conceptualize healthy foods in general, perceive processed infant and baby foods available commercially and what feeding practices they actually follow with their children at home.
Design
Five focus groups with 8–12 participants were conducted around the participants’ conceptualization of healthy food, their perceptions about commercially available processed baby and infant foods and their actual feeding practices that they routinely follow with their children. Discussion transcripts were analyzed using an inductive coding approach.
Setting
India.
Participants
Fifty-one professionally qualified, working women with at least one child under 5 years of age.
Results
Participants agreed that fresh food is healthiest. They also had favorable opinions about processed infant and baby foods with regards to healthfulness, hygiene and safety. Healthy foods were largely conceptualized in relation to nutrient claims, ingredients and discernible health outcomes. They use cues, such as health claims, brand, price, package design and others to determine healthfulness of the product. Perception was heavily influenced by these extrinsic cues rather than by participants’ own nutrition knowledge. Despite having the knowledge, most participants admitted to using these foods on account of factors such as their own inability to lactate, social pressure, lack of time and convenience.
Conclusions
Most educated and well off people continue to use these products. While they rue the lack of stringent regulatory measures in India, they feel there is an urgent need to address this huge policy gap by way of legislation and regulation.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-024-19631-2.
Keywords: Qualitative research, Consumer behavior, Food policy, Healthiness, Perception, Processed baby food
Author Biography
Suruchi Singh, NMIMS, Mumbai, India
Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad, India
Click on "Archives" to access the full archive of scientific preprints. You may use the categories and the search functionality to find select preprints you're interested in.
