Oil/Salt Use Assessment of Chinese-Style Canteens Based on Consumers’ Perception of the Nutrition Environment

Abstract

Excess cooking oil and salt use in catering services contributes to obesity and cardiovascular disease, but the assessment of oil/salt use has been a challenge in nutrition environment measurement. We conducted a knowledge, attitude, and practice survey on 250 respondents in five university canteens at China Agricultural University, Beijing, China. Using on-site tools including a newly developed Likert scale and the previously tested Oil–Salt Visual Analogue Scale (OS-VAS), the respondents were asked to evaluate their personal taste, their impression of the oil/salt status of canteen dishes, and their attitude toward oil/salt reduction. Data analysis showed that gender and self-image of body shape had a significant impact on KAP scores and the impression of the oil/salt environment. The respondents’ taste preferences correlated with their perception of oil and salt, but knowledge and attitude were not directly related to scores on oil and salt, while weight status was related to oil and salt scores. The Likert scale-based assessment could work but was not as effective as the OS-VAS in distinguishing the differences among the selected canteens. These results indicate that the quality of the nutrition environment in catering services needs to be comprehensively evaluated with an objective evaluation of raters and a subjective evaluation of consumers.

Keywords

• nutrition environment
• perception
• oil and salt
• Chinese-style canteens
• KAP