Functional foods in Portugal: profiles and logics of consumption

Abstract

Introduction: Health, present and future, is becoming increasingly structuring of the lifestyle of large amounts of western populations. Food, as an immediate intervention object, is revealing plasticity either in which concerns the transformative power of technology or the enlarged purposes of usage. Functional foods, a category of techno-foods, enriched with micro-ingredients, is showing increasing presence in the Portuguese dietary habits related both with the willing to consume from the individual’s side and the expanding creative offer from the industry side. In a context of deregulation of eating practices [1], in which dietary norms are under constant remodelling and dietary patterns become fragmented, hybrid objects (between food and medicines), such as the functional foods, play an important role in the food decision making and the associated risk management. The mobilization of the ‘rationalism’ concept from Weber [2] and its declination on the cost-benefit principle of calculation [3] together with the neoliberal ideology of empowerment of the ‘responsible’ consumer [4] enable to understand the regular consumers of functional foods as calculated, methodical and premeditated agents trying to achieve higher levels of control of their bodies.

Materials and methods: In an approach to a mix-methods methodology two independent quantitative techniques were used namely a survey by questionnaire about nutritional habits, of the Portuguese population, and a database of 500.000 transactions, of functional foods, performed with a retail chain’s loyalty card in order to identify typified usage profiles. Further analysis of content of 4 focus groups, integrating 24 participants, was used to explore the logics and perceptions that modulate the different modes of relation of Portuguese consumers with functional foods. This investigation complied with the standard ethics procedures and follows the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Results: The combination of the quantitative data shows the average consumer as being a woman, aged 35–54 years, high levels of education and living in a home with a monthly income >2.500,00€ and consuming in a daily or weekly basis. The most consumed products are those for the regulation of the intestinal transit, mainly yogurts enriched with bacteria and water and cereals enriched with fibres.

Discussion and conclusions: Three profiles were identified related to the following rationalities: Aspirational, Instrumental and Pragmatic. The first two, usually related with the ‘worried well’, reveal medicalised or proto-medicalised practices connected with the use-value of the functional foods, transformed in a therapeutic tool, either to complement, delay or substitute a medicine. The third is an indicator of how commodification and normalisation is stimulating simplified heuristics [5]. Through functional foods medicalisation presents new social manifestations and expands to the territories of performance and wellbeing.