Adolescents' perceptions of the costs and benefits of food additives and their presence in different foods

A questionnaire concerning the use of additives in foods was completed by 572 high school students aged 12-15 years. Participants recorded how often they ate each of 16 common foods, and rated the relative levels of colourings, flavourings, preservatives and traces of pesticides that each of these foods contained. They also rated the relative importance of eight reasons (e.g. taste, health) in their own food choices, and provided comparative evaluations of the concepts 'food with additives' and 'food without additives' in terms of these same eight attributes. Participants discriminated between the 16 foods in terms of the chemicals they believed they contained, but these estimates were unaffected by age or sex. When these estimates were weighted by participants' own reports of consumption, girls scored lower than boys on a measure of the assumed additive content of their own diet. Own additive consumption was significantly associated with ratings of reasons for food choice and comparisons of food with/without additives. However, the form of this association did not support standard expectancy-value formulations of attitude-behaviour relationships. Food with additives was seen overall as preferable in terms of ease of preparation and duration of freshness, but more problematic in terms of health and safety.