*3.3. Carrier Foods*

Previous studies highlighted the importance of the type of carrier food products regarding acceptance of health benefits by consumers [30,40,57,58]. During data collection, respondents could express their health-related preference about 25 types of foods on 1-5 Likert scale (Figure 3). Table 6 shows the 5 carrier categories composed by PCA.

Eating fruits and vegetables is the best way for keeping a healthy diet according to the respondents. "Fruits and vegetables" form an independent group by PCA, which contains processed products and mushrooms, too. The following categories are "meat, fish, and egg," "natural products," and "dairy products." "Natural products" is a heterogeneous group compared to the others. It contains juice; honey; tea; nuts and other oily seeds, muesli; and herbal products. "Breakfast products," namely fruit jam, bakery products, and margarine are at the end of the preference list.

Figure 4 shows the differences between age groups connected to carrier categories composed with PCA.

Differences between preferences of age groups are significant in cases of "dairy products," "breakfast products," and "meat, fish, and eggs." "Fruits and vegetables" and "natural products" are fairly important for all age groups. Older adults preferred "dairy products" and "breakfast products" to a greater extent than others.


**Figure 3.** Preference of different food carriers (1-5 Likert scale, where 5 means the highest level of preference).




**Table 6.** *Cont.*

**Figure 4.** Preference of food carrier categories composed with PCA, between different age groups (\* *p* < 0.05).

### *3.4. Health problems and acceptance of functional foods*

The main health problems people are most affected by and worried about compared to the acceptance of mitigation and prevention with functional foods are shown in Figure 5.

**Figure 5.** Consumer concerns in regard to certain health problems and the perceived suitability of functional foods to prevent or mitigate these problems.

According to the results, the Hungarian population is mainly concerned/worried about the following health problems: vision deficiencies and disorders, dental problems, and heart and cardiovascular diseases. Results also highlight that diets containing functional foods for the mitigation and prevention of health problems are mainly related to digestive problems, high cholesterol level, lactose sensitivity, and gluten sensitivity according to the opinion of the respondents.

In the case of several health problems, the age of respondents has been a significant factor, shown in Table 7.

In the vast majority of cases where significant differences were detected, older adults are more affected or worried about the certain health problems. The only exception is migraine, which worries and affects younger people more.


**Table 7.** Presence of particular health concerns in di fferent age groups.

Figure 6 shows the proportion of a ffected/worried consumers in the age groups, who would accept food as a solution to prevent and/or mitigate the particular health problem.

**Figure 6.** Proportion of affected/worried consumers in the age groups, who accepted food as a solution to prevent and/or mitigate a particular health problem (\* *p* < 0.05; \*\* *p* < 0.01).

Among the a ffected/worried consumers, significant di fferences were detected between age groups in the case of heart and cardiovascular diseases, arthritis disorders, allergies, skin diseases and eczema, and lactose sensitivity. In the majority of these cases, older adults are characterized by a lower level of acceptance than the younger ones. In general, a ffected young adults and middle-aged adults show the highest level of acceptance of functional food products: younger adults particularly accept these in case of heart and cardiovascular diseases, and lactose sensitivity, while middle-aged adults would prefer functional food to prevent/mitigate the effect of skin diseases and eczema and allergies.
