Knowing what motivates people to select the food they purchase and consume is not only necessary for optimal product development but is crucial for achieving successful diet intervention and effective consumer education towards positive public health outcomes.

Food choice motives are vast and complex, and understanding them is a subject that researchers have approached, determined and quantified in a number of ways, given their important implications. 

PhD candidate Nomzamo Dlamini of the University of Pretoria’s Department of Consumer and Food Sciences, together with her supervisors have developed a tool to study people’s food choices in emerging economies. While researchers all over the world, including in Africa, use questionnaires to study people’s food choice motives, Dlamini realised that most of these tools were developed in the global north, using insights from people living in these contexts.