Food neophobia and intervention of university students in China

Abstract Background Food neophobia was defined as the unwillingness or avoidance to eat new foods. There are many studies on food neophobia in children, but few in university students. This study was to examine the level of food neophobia of Chinese university students. The aim is to find a way to help them relieve food neophobia. Methods A total of 2,366 university students (16–22 years old) from Xinyang normal university were recruited to conduct a questionnaire survey on food neophobia scale (FNS) of Chinese version, which contained 10 questions. Significant difference analysis and principal component analysis were conducted. Results For Chinese university students, willingness to try new food, trust in new food, eating disorder, and food pickiness were the characteristic indexes to evaluate the food neophobia. Gender had no significant effect, but long‐term nutrition courses had a great impact on food neophobia of university students. Conclusions The level of food neophobia of Chinese university students is relatively high. To formulate and implement a continuous diet and nutrition education plan is good and necessary to relieve the food neophobia. Implications for Practice These data complement the limited literature on food neophobia of university students, which will help to develop intervention plans to reduce eating disorders and support the need for further research to reveal the potential mechanism.

diversity of food consumption of young people, as well as their willingness to change diet to support good nutrition (Raudenbush & Frank, 1999), which will bring a series of potential negative consequences (Edwards et al., 2010) affecting mental health and physical health (Schnettler et al., 2017). Therefore, this study investigated the level of food neophobia on university students in China, in order to explore the potential determinants of food neophobia, supplement the limited literature to support the need for further research, provide reference for formulating nutrition and health intervention measures in the future.

| Participants
All participants were native Mandarin speakers, most from Xinyang normal University, only a few of food majors from of Xinyang Agriculture and Forestry University (Table 1). Investigation was divided into two stages. Firstly, we employed 1794 university students to investigate the level of food neophobia and related influencing factors by food neophobia scale (FNS) of Chinese version (Zhao et al., 2020). Seven indicators of gender, age, nation, only child, origin, major, and parental education level were collected. Secondly, we employed 572 university students to further study the effects of gender and nutrition courses on food neophobia among university students. Students from six majors of food, biology, physical, computer, civil engineering, and physics were employed for this purpose.
Data were collected through an online questionnaire created using the software Wenjuanxing . Participants were recruited through a snowball sampling on WeChat, a social media application widespread in China. WeChat was chosen because users are verified; thus, there is virtually zero possibilities to incur in fake profiles (Zheng et al., 2021). Researchers sent the questionnaire link to a group of WeChat teacher users and asked them to share it with their students. The questionnaire was anonymous, and participants did not receive any payment.

| Questionnaire and measures
The questionnaire we used was Chinese version of the FNS (FNS-C). This questionnaire was translated from Food Neophobia Scale (Pliner & Hobden, 1992) by Southern Medical University, and exploration and confirmation in three samples of 1,073 healthy Chinese university students. The original questionnaire was developed by Patricia Pliner in English in 1992. The FNS-C (Table 2) comprises 10 statements to which participants respond on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 for "strongly disagree" to 7 for "strongly agree." The total score is calculated as the sum of the 10 items, with five items reverse-scored as a high score is indicative of high neophilia.
Accordingly, the scale's total score varies between 10 and 70 with a single dimension. The final questions are shown in Appendix 1.
Appendix 2 outlined the descriptive statistics of this sample. Excel 2013 statistical software was used for data statistics and sorting, and SPSS 20.0 data analysis software was used for significant difference analysis and principal component analysis.

| FNS-C scores analysis
The FNS-C scores of 1794 university students ranged from 10 to 70, the mean and standard deviation were 36.27 and 7.61, respectively.
FNS-C scores of the factors are shown in Appendix 3. Comparisons of FNS-C scores and levels are shown in Table 2. Obviously, the food neophobia level of middle was up to 81.78%, accounting for the most. Among them, proportion of FNS-C scores (24-36) was 41.92% (31.34 ± 3.41), and proportion of FNS-C scores (37-44) was 39.86% (40.10 ± 2.03).

| Principal component analysis
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a simplified statistical method for multivariate data, which transforms multiple indicators into a few comprehensive indicators. In order to achieve the goal of dimensionality reduction, more information should be integrated as Note: The symbol "√√" indicates that nutrition courses were offered more than one year. The symbol "√" indicates that nutrition courses were offered within one year. The symbol "×" indicates that the students had no nutrition courses.

TA B L E 2 FNS-C scores analysis (N = 1794)
Characteristics  showed that there was no significant difference between female and male participants. The result is the same as the first time. The nutrition courses for more than one year had a great impact on food neophobia of university students (Table 5). And FNS-C scores were lower than other students, who had nutrition courses within one

| Significant difference analysis about gender
year. Therefore, setting up nutrition courses is a good way to relieve or overcome food neophobia.

| D ISCUSS I ON
The Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) is validated psychometric tool consisting of 10 questions. The 10-item questionnaire used five items with positive wording and five items with negative wording. The latter were scored in reverse. These statements are measured on a 7-point Likert scale from strong opposition to strong agreement. The higher the score, the more neophobic the individual. On the contrary, the less willing to eat new food (exotic food or novel food). The Food Neophobia Scale has been used in the United States, Canada, Note: ** p <.01. The symbol "√√" indicates that nutrition courses were offered more than one year. The symbol "√" indicates that nutrition courses were offered within one year. The symbol "×" indicates that the students had no nutrition courses.

| CON CLUS IONS
The aim of this study is to investigate Chinese university students' food neophobia, which is widely studied in the world, but there are only two studies in China. One is about baby, the other is about university students. The results of principal component analysis showed that four principal components of willingness to try new food, trust in new food, eating disorder, and food pickiness accounted for 65.797% of the explanatory variables, which were the characteristic indexes to evaluate the food neophobia in university students. The level of food neophobia of Chinese university students is relatively high. Gender had no significant effect on their food neophobia, but long-term nutrition courses had a great impact on food neophobia of university students. To formulate and implement a continuous diet and nutrition education plan is good and necessary to promote their physical and mental health.

This work was supported by Nanhu Scholars Program for Young
Scholars of XYNU. The authors would like to appreciate the help received from Xinyang Normal University, China.

CO N FLI C T O F I NTE R E S T
The authors declare no conflict of interest.

E TH I C A L A PPROVA L
This does not involve human or animal modeling.

DATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T
The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.