Factors Associated with the Functional Drink Consumption of BangkokResidents, Thailand

Abstract

Functional drink is a prominent product category under the functional food sector. Health benefit belief from functional foods emerges as the strongest positive determinant of willingness to consume functional drink. Most common ingredients in these functional drinks are sugar, fructose and maltitol which are the source of carbohydrate. These ingredients also have some negative effects on human body if consume frequently. Thus the purpose of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the factors associated with the functional drinks consumption behaviour of Bangkok residents, Thailand. The survey was conducted among adult of Thai nationalists for both male and female with age range of 18 to 65 years in metropolitan area of Bangkok. Structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Data were analyzed by Chi-square test and t-test. It has been observed that majority of the respondents (88.40%) consumed functional drinks at least once in a life. The percentage of consumption of functional drink was higher for female (62.2%) than male (37.8%) among who consumed functional drinks once in a life. As a reason to choose any kind of functional drinks, 46.8% of the respondents mentioned “for better health”. Statistically significant association (p<0.05) was found between ever consumption of functional drinks and health concern level and also between ever consumption of functional drinks and ingredients of drinks. Regarding the motivational factor, ‘Interesting Advertisement’, 62.30% respondents’ of the opinion was for ‘Important’. Consumption of functional drinks was common among majority of the Bangkok residents. Media campaign about the sugary functional drinks would be effective for raising awareness about added sugars in functional drinks, increasing knowledge about health problems associated with excessive sugar consumption.