Food neophobia is related to factors associated with functional food consumption in older adults

An abundance of functional food products with specific bioactive ingredients have emerged to target prevention and management of diet-related chronic disease. Older adults can particularly benefit from functional foods due to their multiple health concerns and growing proportion of the Canadian population. However, little is known about older adults' acceptance of and willingness to consume functional foods. The purpose of this study was to relate the degree of food neophobia to factors associated with functional food consumption in older adults. A total of 200 community dwelling older adults (70.8 +/- 7.17 years old) completed a researcher-administered questionnaire exploring functional food consumption, attitudes towards functional foods, general health, medical and demographic data, and degree of food neophobia, which was assessed through completion of the 10-question Food Neophobia Scale (Pliner & Hobden, 1992). Cronbach's alpha for the Food Neophobia Scale was 0.85, indicating a high degree of internal reliability. Participants were divided into food neophobia score groups according to tertiles (low 10-23 (n = 68), medium 24-31 (n = 67), high 32-63 (n = 65) degrees of food neophobia). Participants with a higher degree of food neophobia were less willing to try a new functional food (p = 0.05) and those in the high food neophobia group reported the greatest number of barriers to consuming functional foods (p < 0.05). Among the barriers to functional food consumption, availability was more frequently identified by participants within the high food neophobia group (p = 0.05). The high food neophobia group also had a greater number of participants who reported taking prescription medications regularly (p = 0.04) and worried about functional foods interacting with their medications (p = 0.05). There were no other differences in factors related to consumption of functional foods or demographics among food neophobia groups. This research demonstrates that food neophobia is related to factors associated with functional food consumption and rationalizes the consideration of food neophobia in the advance of functional foods. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.