Food Shopping Profiles and Their Association with Dietary Patterns: A Latent Class Analysis

Background: Food shopping is a complex behavior that consists of multiple dimensions. Little research has explored multiple dimensions of food shopping or examined how it relates to dietary intake. Objective: To identify patterns (or classes) of food shopping across four domains (fresh food purchasing, conscientious food shopping, food shopping locations, and food/beverage purchasing on or near campus) and explore how these patterns relate to dietary intake among college students. Design: A cross-sectional online survey was administered. Participants/setting: Students attending a public 4-year university and a 2-year community college in the Twin Cities (Minnesota) metropolitan area (N=1,201) participated in this study. Main outcome measures: Fast-food and soda consumption as well as meeting fruit and vegetable, fiber, added sugar, calcium, dairy, and fat recommendations. Statistical analyses: Crude and adjusted latent class models and adjusted logistic regression models were fit. Results: An eight-class solution was identified: "traditional shopper" (14.9%), "fresh food and supermarket shopper" (14.1%), "convenience shopper" (18.8%), "conscientious convenience shopper" (13.8%), "conscientious, fresh food, convenience shopper" (11.8%), "conscientious fresh food shopper" (6.6%), "conscientious nonshopper" (10.2%), and "nonshopper" (9.8%). "Fresh food and supermarket shoppers" and "conscientious fresh food shoppers" had better dietary intake (for fast food, calcium, dairy, and added sugar), whereas "convenience shoppers" and "conscientious convenience shoppers," and "nonshoppers" had worse dietary intake (for soda, calcium, dairy, fiber, and fat) than "traditional shoppers.". Conclusions: These findings highlight unique patterns in food shopping and associated dietary patterns that could inform tailoring of nutrition interventions for college students. Additional research is needed to understand modifiable contextual influences of healthy food shopping.