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This paper analyses cultural differences in consumers' interest in healthy eating, subjective health and perceived risk of (chronic) diseases, and identifies the association between nutritional status (obesity and overweight) and the above mentioned variables as well as people's socio-demographic characteristics and health conditions that may influence food choice. Cross-sectional data were collected through a consumer survey (n=2400) in 2008 with samples representative for age and region in France, Poland and Spain. Body-mass-index (BMI) was inversely associated with education and positively associated with age. Women were less likely to be overweight than men. Subjective health was negatively associated with the likelihood of being obese. The likelihood of being obese decreased with higher perceived risk of suffering from stress and from cancer, whilst the likelihood of being overweight decreased with higher perceived risk of suffering from stress. Despite a tendency of lower interest in healthy eating among obese consumers, interest in healthy eating was not significantly associated with the likelihood of being obese or overweight after Holm-Bonferroni correction. The findings of this study suggest that health consequences and disease risks of excessive weight should be better communicated to European populations. Furthermore, factors associated with obesity such as subjective health and perceived risk of chronic diseases should be considered both at individual counselling and at public health policy levels.

This study investigates the association between traditional food consumption and motives for food choice in six European countries. Cross-sectional data were collected through the TRUEFOOD pan-European consumer survey (n = 4828) with samples representative for age, gender and region in Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Poland and Spain. Importance attached to familiarity with a product is found to be strongly and positively associated with general attitude toward traditional food as well as traditional food consumption. The importance attached to convenience was negatively related to both general attitude toward traditional food and traditional food consumption, while the importance of weight control negatively influenced the general attitude. Natural content of food was positively associated with the attitude toward traditional food and traditional food consumption. The importance of price when purchasing food failed to be significantly related with general attitude and traditional food consumption both for the pooled sample as well as within each country except in Spain. The proposed model contributes to a better understanding of factors shaping the image and influencing the consumption of traditional foods in Europe. General attitude toward traditional foods, familiarity, and importance of food naturalness emerged as drivers for traditional food consumption. Importance attached to convenience and health acted as direct barriers to traditional food consumption, whereas importance of weight control emerged as an indirect barrier through lowering general attitude toward traditional foods.