Abstract

VALERO BLANCO, E. et al. City vs. countryside: where do you eat best and healthiest?. Nutr. Hosp. [online]. 2015, vol.32, n.5, pp.2286-2293. ISSN 1699-5198.  https://dx.doi.org/10.3305/nh.2015.32.5.9688.

Introduction: bearing in mind the influence of the environment on the individuals and their choices and behaviours in general and particularly with respect to food, it might be interesting to explore whether eating habits are better or healthier in rural areas than in urban ones. Objective: to analyse the perception of the level in which eating habits could be considered better or worse, more or less healthy, in rural and urban areas. Method: 281 students (18.37 ± 6.28 years) volunteered participated in the study completing an ad hoc questionnaire designed to measure the characteristics attributed by the participants to the rural and urban eating habits. Results: 49.50% of the participants considered that food is better in rural areas, 8.50% in urban contexts and 42% equally in both rural and urban areas; 80.42% responded that food is healthier in rural areas and 19.57% in urban areas. In addition, 85.10% of the participants coming from rural families considered that food is healthier in the country and the same applies to 75.80% coming from urban families. Discussion and conclusions: the perception about what is healthy is not uniform. From a general point of view it seems that eating better is not the same than eating healthier. The idea of eating better not always is synonymous of eating healthy from a medical-nutritional point of view. This difference could make it difficult to spread the idea of a healthy way of eating to the general population.

Keywords : Healthy eating; Rural environment; Urban areas; Eating habits.

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