The Categorization and Preferences of Vegetables Among Adults

Abstract

This thesis aims to gain a stronger understanding of the under-consumption of vegetables among adults. Food neophobia, food skills and categorization were suggested as three potential variables that predict vegetable preferences. Preferences were gathered by observing the ranking of ten vegetables and analysing the vegetables that were categorized in five categorization tasks. 50 University of Guelph students & faculty and 220 M-Turkers participated in an online study conducted using Qualtrics. The results demonstrated a positive statistically significant relationship at the .05 level between all five of the categorization tasks & vegetable preferences (p<.001). Additionally, the relationship between food neophobia (FN) and vegetable preferences was found to be statistically significant (p<.001). However, there was no relationship observed between food skills & vegetable preferences (p>.05). These findings indicate that food neophobia and categorization influence vegetable preferences.