While nutritional quality, or lack thereof, is clearly a factor in people's minds when they think of fast food, it's just one of many possible reasons we consider while looking for our next meal.
Researchers attempted to determine the fundamental criteria distinguishing persons who classified themselves as frequent fast food consumers versus non-regular fast food consumers in a new study that surveyed over 300 respondents via an online questionnaire.
According to the findings, the biggest reason individuals avoid fast food isn't merely because it's unhealthy. They are motivated instead by sentiments of guilt.
"A gap in research is that reasons for not consuming fast food [are] relatively unknown, other than anecdotal assumptions that low nutritional quality of fast food may discourage fast food consumption," a team led by first author and hospitality management researcher Kiwon Lee from Kent State University in Ohio explains in the paper.
Respondents were asked to rate how important they thought various aspects of fast food were, including functional values (e.g. convenience, taste, familiarity) and emotional values (e.g. pleasure), among other things. The survey probed participants on everything from food poisoning risks to animal welfare concerns and the environmental impacts of fast food production.
What makes them abstain the most, according to the research, is... guilt.
This finding implies that knowing about poor nutritional quality isn't enough to change someone's mind about fast food consumption, which is consistent with earlier study.
The researchers note that the sample size of their study was small, and hence caution is advised when generalizing their findings. Furthermore, in order to keep their original survey reasonable, they only interviewed participants on burgers and fries, but the research approach may now be expanded to larger data sets and more fast food groups.
Importantly, the team believes that obesity prevention initiatives could benefit from focusing their messaging on "guilt appeal," or attempting to sway customers away from fast food by utilizing persuasive strategies that emphasize the guilt they'll feel if they eat it.
This could be useful, but the findings are contradictory.
The researchers discovered some of the key factors that differentiate regular fast food eaters from non-regular fast food eaters, including convenience and taste, as well as concerns about fast food's potential safety (which probably weighs more heavily on your mind if you're the type of person who eats a lot of it).
Those findings, according to the experts, might soon be aimed at all of us in the form of newly optimized advertising campaigns - whether we're just passing through or loyal customers.
The findings are reported in Food Quality and Preference.
