Nowadays, the consumption of low-calorie foods is being taken into account as a tool for redudng the incidence of certain nutrition-related health disorders. In this context, several factors were used to model low-fat (LF), low-sugar (LS) and high-calorie (HC) food consumption behavior. These factors were: personality traits (neuroticism and conscientiousness), food choice motives (health and weight control) and intrinsic personal characteristics such as self-esteem and satisfaction with life. The results indicate a good fit for the proposed model. Weight control was the best predictor of consumption of this kind of product, and health was a less strong predictor. In addition, correlations between the constructs indicated that LF and IS had the strongest correlation with each other and with weight control (p<0.01). Surprisingly, the correlation between health and LF and LS product consumption was low. As regards differences in gender, women showed more concern about weight control, as expected. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
