Unsettled with the mounting health concerns, heightened media coverage, and discourse surrounding the ultra-processed foods (UPF), I embarked on a 5 month research journey to investigate how consumers percieve food processing and why UPFs are so misunderstood.
Context
The Capstone is an extended, interdisciplinary research project to conduct a mixed-methods investigation that addresses both academic and real-world audiences, culminating in an academic output and a stakeholder-focused outcome.
Methodology
Research Design
My study employed a mixed-methods concurrent approach to address the research question, whilst combining quantitative and qualitative methods for data collection and analysis.
- Quantitative techniques (e.g. chi-square and logistic regression) uncovered statistical associations between demographics and UPF awareness.
- Qualitative methods (e.g. systems mapping) dug deeper into recurring themes of marketing, labeling, and health perceptions.
My data comprised of both primary and secondary data sources.
Survey Design
My survey was designed to investigate the level of understanding and common misconceptions about UPFs.
The structure, and wording were carefully considered using insights from The MOM Test to minimise the effects of cognitive biases (e.g. social desirability), question priming, and ensure authentic responses.
Participants were first asked perception (focused on thoughts and attitudes) and behaviour questions first, with no mention of ultra-processed foods (besides the participant information sheet), followed by knowledge questions to avoid any effects of unconscious bias influencing participant’s emotions and subsequent answers.
Systems Mapping
To broaden the perspective beyond individual consumer choices, I designed a systems map to illustrate how the food industry’s narrative-shaping — through lobbying, public relations, and partial reformulation strategies — intersects with consumer behaviors and public-health concerns. This revealed multiple reinforcing feedback loops, including the industry’s profit motives, confusion-creation strategies, and the resultant gaps in consumer understanding.
Data Triangulation
Secondary data from the Open Food Facts repository and the Food Standards Agency’s Consumer Insights Tracker provided comparative benchmarks. This triangulation strengthened reliability, ensuring that findings from smaller primary samples could be interpreted alongside large-scale trends in labeling, additives, and consumer sentiment toward ultra-processed foods.
Findings
Ineffective consumer tool
NOVA classification system is largely ineffective as a consumer-facing tool as participants couldn’t distinguish between processed and ultra-processed foods.
Multiple narratives
My analysis found that the “UPF” term unifies
a wide array of interconnected issues such as public health, socioeconomic, and environmental concerns under one intuitive label.
Confusion
The same simplicity that captures multiple narratives can paradoxically breed confusion as people conflate different yet interconnected issues under a single term.
My Takeaways
Researching this topic challenged me to think dialectically, often reconciling opposite views on industrial food processing whilst also evaluating the practical utility of the UPF (NOVA) classification.
It taught me to be more critical of the everyday heuristics we rely on and recognising that even widely accepted labels can oversimplify complex realities.