Article
Dietary Patterns and Eating Outside Home Behaviour among Urban Households: A Cluster-Based Analysis from Hyderabad, India
Urbanisation and changing lifestyles in India have caused substantial changes in eating habits, where people are now increasingly relying on outside food and prepared meals. In this research, dietary behaviour patterns of 396 urban households from Izzat Nagar, Khana Metta, Hyderabad have been investigated using structured face-to-face interview techniques. Exploratory factor analysis has revealed six dietary behaviour factors accounting for 62.16% variance, including outside food consumption, health awareness, staple foods consumption, fresh foods consumption, supplements consumption, and unhealthy diets. Using K-means clustering, these households were classified into four categories, namely Balanced Traditional Dieters, Health-Conscious Traditional Consumers, Mindful Modern Dieters, and Unhealthy Fast-Food Consumers. Differences across clusters were found to be significant using one-way ANOVA with large effect sizes (η²) for food quality (η²=0.225), health concern (η²=0.219), and food knowledge (η²=0.171). Age, educational level, and income level were among the demographic factors found to be significantly correlated with diet clusters based on chi-squared analyses. The Unhealthy Fast-Food Consumers appeared to be the least healthy cluster due to low health consciousness, strong affinity towards fried foods, and comprised mostly of older and less educated people. Importantly, consumers’ choice for outside food that is fried leads FBOs to reuse oils, thereby creating waste cooking oils (WCO), which pose significant risks to the environment and people’s health if disposed of improperly. These results highlight the urgent need for public health programs aimed at increasing people’s dietary awareness and the importance of future longitudinal studies focusing on cultural and psychosocial factors affecting urban diet behaviour.