Less Acculturated U.S. Hispanics Have Very Different Ideas About Healthy Foods

An NPD study of U.S. Hispanics’ food and beverage consumption patterns finds that  those who are foreign-born and speak mostly Spanish tend to think of healthy foods as lacking in taste and nutrition. Instead, healthy and nutritious are defined by the quantity of food served rather than the quality. Forty-six percent of Spanish-language dominant Hispanics feel that almost all healthy food lacks flavor. But these numbers change the longer Hispanics are in the U.S. Thirty-one percent of bilingual Hispanics and only 11 percent of “English dominant” Hispanics agree that healthy foods lack flavor or nutrition. The report suggests that food manufacturers and retailers could tailor their products to fulfill the needs of less acculturated Hispanics.