INTRODUCTION
“Why do we eat?” answer to this question will be obviously to gain energy that we need for day to day activities and ultimately to promote survival. Conversely, our modern day food choices advocate to threaten our health and wellbeing. Biggest reason for this is what we eat has very less to with our sustenance and much more on taste.
Fats and oils play one of the major role in unhealthy diet. Even though we get energy from non-fat part of our diet, there has to be some part from fat as well to provide essential fatty acids which the body alone unable to synthesis. Apart from that it act as a carrier of fat soluble vitamins and necessary for their absorption. Generally about one third of energy intake should obtain from fat and too much fat can leads to weight gain, and many more non communicable diseases such as CVD (Cardio vascular diseases). In the current society lifestyle factors including maladaptive diet are dominating other factors which causes systematic inflammations which will be the major process that leads to develop atherosclerosis.(Ali and Kapoor, 2010) Diet and lifestyle can be modified in order to prevent these type of non-communicable diseases and this area has been the main focus of nutrition based research. In order to overcome this common complication, general public should have adequate and accurate knowledge and awareness about what they consume as food. At the same time, there are numerous spook stories about different fats and oil varieties. Nowadays these myths about fat and oil goes way over the top among others due to large number of emerging food related health complications.
With emerging knowledge supporting media which provide ample amount of information regarding diet and overall human health, many consumers tend to take their personal health and nutritional decisions into their own hand. People are becoming more contingent on nutritional sources including websites, television advertisements, radio, newspapers, friends and family. This may lead to nutrition misinformation and health fraud(Ali and Kapoor, 2010). Still general public has no awareness on accurate, peer reviewed science based nutritional information(Nondzor, Tawiah and Michael, 2015). Nutrition information which not supported by science may be incomplete and misleading. It can be challenging for consumers to differentiate what is wrong and what is right. In order to solve this, there has to be online scientific and reliable communication source (blog, web page or face book page) for Sri Lankan community to raise their day to day food related issues and get accurate scientific solution quickly.
According to FAO researches, assessing and analyzing consumer nutrition related knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) will be one of the beneficial method in gaining a good insight into people’s personal determinants on their dietary habits(Bandara et al., 2021). By considering above details, the aim of this study is to identify factors which influence consumer choices on different fat and oil types available in Sri Lankan supermarkets. Additionally to review food purchasing behavior and knowledge of the community in selected study locations. Information was gathered using a questionnaire survey. Food purchasing behavior of global consumers including developed and developing countries like Sri Lanka, has significantly varies due to their income, education, global interactions, information, communication technology, urbanization and emerging health awareness. However shopping has become a trend in current society which directly influence on consumer’s food choices and dietary patterns.
But with the current economic situations mainly in developing countries, there is a common bad habit that people tend to go for cheap option. One example is using refined coconut oil in cooking. Other than supermarket customers in rural areas people used to buy bulk coconut oils from retail shops. This is really bad and at least now people has to go for good and healthy choices in the case oil selecting best cooking oil for their day today cooking(Vakayil and RS, 2019). The food environment tend to play a main role in deciding purchasing decisions in which people are living. Namely, supermarkets, convenience stores, retail shops and fast food restaurants(Zhao et al., 2021). According to a study conducted by global market researcher in North America, women do most of shopping than men and they are the ruler's of kitchen and also dominate the supermarkets and retail market place(Rathee and Rajain, 2021). Therefore, purchasing women aged above 20 (working and non working) was selected as target group in this survey. Cooking oil is the most important ingredient when it comes to daily cooking. In current market there are many cooking oil under superior branded and non-brand names with different level of pricings(Rajee and Lenitha, 2022). Those are mainly coconut oil, palm oil, sunflower oil, soy bean oil, sesame oil, corn oil and ghee. Research findings show that the volume of branded oil market is less than 10% in Sri Lanka, remaining is still loose oil in grocery shops(Marina brand Sri Lanka, no date).
Regardless of urban and rural marketing team of Marina has done a market research and the results shows that 58% of respondents purchase coconut oil and 21% purchase other vegetable oils or both. Since past coconut oil was the leading cooking oil that normally purchased highly in Sri Lanka than any other local or imported cooking oil type. Coconut oil is having a long history being a part of Asian diet, where olive oil is in the Mediterranean diet. Contribution of coconut oil is only 35 to the global usage whereas palm oil contributes approx. 33%.
According to a Sri Lankan study conducted with 4 different populations including, two rural, one sub-urban and urban, it has been revealed that amount of total fat intake was 77.82, 69 and 66 respectively and it was in a range of24-25% from total dietary energy(Weerasekara et al., no date).although higher amount of lipid profile reported among urban subjects, still the value was in the non-risky range. Urban people probably consume more sources of fat other than coconut oil and coconut products which other groups do. However satisfactory lipid profiles were observed among rural community due to greater physical activity. Similar study done with two Polynesians tribes which shows 35% to 56% of total energy has been obtained from coconut, but the heart disease incidents reported were very low. However due to their migration to Australia or New Zealand, their cholesterol level and heart diseases rate shown a significant rise.
Few years earlier there was a black mark on consumption of coconut oil saying that it causes heart related problems. There is a hypothesis which says more saturated fats (SFA) in coconut oil, palm oil and animal based fats tend to increase the probability of getting hyper cholesterol level is blood which leads to heart related diseases, whereas Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in soybean oil and corn oil have the potential in decreasing above mentioned disease conditions. A Harvard professor, Karl Michels has reported that “coconut is one of the worst food you can eat”. By contest a cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra has stated the opposite idea saying that current medical evidences suggests that coconut oil is more beneficial to consume than hydrogenated fats.
However the main aim of this study is to identify factors influence consumer choices for different fats and oils available in supermarkets. Mainly to explore whether there is any difference in intelligent purchase between working women and non-working in working women. Further to review food purchasing behavior and knowledge of the community.