To determine the existence of latent demand for diet/low calorie food in India

Abstract

Culture plays an important role in the food choices of people. Indian culture has been responsible for the inherent propensity of Indians to look for variety in choosing the food they consume. While Americans attach little importance to taste and variety, the Indian consumer gives greater importance to taste through both pre-cooking and cooking procedures. Phenomenology of culture explains the importance of cultural shifts in driving the market to change its preferences for food. India has been experiencing westernization and increased access to western markets in the past few years. Rise in health issues like lifestyle diseases and shift in the family structures from large families to nuclear families have been driving the Indian consumer to seek quicker but healthier food supplements. Indians facing this shift have been experiencing a taste-vs-health dilemma as no diet variant has the taste that an Indian craves for. As a result, there has been a wave of diet variants being introduced in all kinds of food and beverages with an attempt to combine taste and health by cutting the calorie intake from the foods. Women, especially girls in their late teens and twenties are found to be more conscious of their calorie intake, while young men are more or less equally conscious, mainly because of the western trends emerging in the Indian youth segment. Food demand in India has been undergoing a change since the last two decades. Diet transition can be seen under two stages in our country – the diet diversification induced by income changes and the globalization of diet induced by influences of globalization. Primary research provided similar inferences where we found that there is an increase in awareness among them to shift to healthier food and that they feel the traditional Indian food has a lot of oil and ghee that make it unhealthy. But most of these people still prefer the Indian taste and would like to have the traditional food whenever they get a chance. The main reason for them to shift to healthier variants seems to be the change in their lifestyle which does not allow them sufficient time to cook with ingredients used traditionally but when it comes to their preference, all of them think that Indian food is the best to have when compared to any low-calorie food that they would have to consume only to protect themselves from illness in later stages of life.