ssessing gender effect in sustainable food literacy

Abstract

Introduction and aim

The goals of sustainable healthy diets are to ensure optimal growth and development of all individuals and to support functional, physical, mental, and social well-being at all stages of life for future generations. It also aims to contribute to the prevention of all kinds of malnutrition (undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, obesity, etc.) with sustainable diets, to reduce the risk of diet-related non-communicable diseases, and to support the protection of biodiversity and planetary health (1).

Food and nutrition literacy is defined as the combination of desires, knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors, and abilities necessary to access, analyze, evaluate, and apply information on these issues, maintain a healthy diet, evaluate the functioning of the food system and ensure food security (2). The development of food literacy to understand sustainable diets and the food system is encouraged. For this purpose, a sustainable food literacy scale was developed to determine the current level of knowledge (3). There are studies examining the relationship between food and nutrition literacy and gender differences, which are known to be affected by many factors. In a cross-sectional study conducted on university students, nutritional literacy was found to be higher in women (4). On the contrary, there are studies showing that gender has no effect on food literacy (5, 6). To the best of our knowledge, studies examining the effects of gender differences on sustainable food literacy and food skills are limited in the literature. The aim of this study is to examine the role of gender in sustainable food literacy in adults.

Materials and method

Data were obtained using a survey containing demographic information and the Sustainable Food Literacy Scale (SFLS). The demographic information survey contained age, gender, education level, employment status, body weight, height and whether they were responsible for food purchase in the household. SFLS developed by Teng and Chih (3) was used to measure the individual's ability to understand sustainable diets (4). Turkish validity and reliability study of SFLS was conducted by Kubilay (7). Turkish version of the scale consists of 5 sub-scales: Sustainable Food Knowledge - I, Sustainable Food Knowledge - II, Food and Culinary Skills, Attitudes, Action Intent and Action Strategies.

Participants were healthy adults between the ages of 18-65 who have been recruited via Google Forms using convenience and snowball sampling methods. It was aimed to include a minimum of 200 people in the study after the power analysis. To intercept missing answers, all questions in the survey were marked as mandatory. No financial incentives were provided to participants. Ethics committee approval for the research was received from Üsküdar University Non-Interventional (Clinical and Human) Research Evaluation Board. Descriptive statistics and regression models were used to analyze the data. Analyzes were performed using SPSS v24, and a p value <0.05 was considered significant.

Results

Within the sample, 69.7% constituted female participants, while 83.3% held a university degree or possessed education at a higher level. The mean age of the sample was 37 ±12.37 years, with a median household income of 30,000 Turkish Lira. The mean body mass index (BMI) was 24.8 ±4,59 kg/m², and 54.2% of the subjects reported active involvement in household food purchases. According to results women scored statistically significantly higher than men for each sub-scale.

It has been observed that being responsible for food purchase is the determinant of food and culinary skills in both women and men; on the other hand, it determined sustainable food knowledge only among women.

Discussion and Conclusion

Studies on health and food literacy show that most of the "food preparation and cooking" work is done by women, and this socially constructed gender role means that women are more likely to eat healthy and have higher levels of food literacy than men (8, 9, 10, 11, 12). In our country, it has been determined that women have more say than men in food selection, preparation, and consumption, starting from the purchasing stage, and have more food and label literacy (13, 14).

The results of our research reported that women received significantly higher scores than men in all sub-scales of SFLQ and support the data in the literature. Despite this, no significant difference was found between sustainable food literacy score and gender in the study conducted in Taiwan (3) and the study conducted by Öztürk and Özgen (15). There is a need for studies with a large sample in which individuals from various socio-economic levels, age groups and genders participate.

Recently, research on the concept of sustainable food literacy has been increasing. Increasing the awareness of individuals in the whole process from production to consumption, choosing foods that consume less available resources and cause low greenhouse gas emissions are important in food purchase (15). Women participating in our study are responsible for 103 (58.9%) food purchases and 33 (43.4%) more than men. The reason for this can be shown as the responsibility of preparing and cooking food with all its stages according to Turkish culinary culture and nutritional habits (16).

When the other sub-scales were examined, it was determined that sustainable food knowledge was affected by being responsible for purchasing food only for women. In the sub-dimensions of food and culinary skills, food purchase was found to be a determinant in both genders. In the sub-dimensions of attitude and intention to act, no significance was found in both genders. It can be foreseen that it may take time for the knowledge and approaches about sustainability to change into attitudes and behaviors in people. However, the statistical significance of the linear regression model alone does not explain the cause-effect relationship (17). There is a need for studies in which advanced statistical analyses are performed and the effects of other variables are also examined.

The limitation of this study is that the number of respondents was small, and it was limited to adults living in Turkey. To ensure the selection of different cultures and groups, studies with large sample sizes, equally distributed among rural and urban populations, should be conducted in the future. In addition, since the study is observational and the data obtained are based on individuals' statements, the effect of unknown confounding factors should not be ignored.

To reduce the effects of the possible climate crisis, it is necessary to increase the awareness of individuals and change their attitudes and movements. Labeling and food literacy in the name of sustainable nutrition is a competency that should be possessed by individuals from all age groups. As the awareness and knowledge of individuals increase, their attitudes towards food will change and the food and dietary patterns recommended against the possible climate crisis will become widespread.

More studies are needed on measures of food literacy for children, adolescents, and older adults that consider the characteristics of each life stage. It should be aimed to educate people on this issue and increase their awareness.