Examine social representations to identify levers aiming at a rebalancing between animal and vegetable proteins: Psychosocial approach

Objectives. - Based on the postulate that social representations drive and influence people's eating habits, the first aim of this study is to identify the social representations towards proteins of French women with children from 6 to 11 years old, in order to understand the barriers to a potential reduction of meat consumption. Secondly, this study aims to highlight some levers able to modify, on the long term, eating habits while rebalancing consumption of animal and vegetable proteins. Method. - Qualitative study. Development of a semi-structured interview guide. Implementation of 21 semi-structured interviews conducted at home and analysis of the interviews' thematic content. Results and discussion. - This study allowed us to highlight, among French mothers, obstacles to the reduction of meat consumption and to the replacement of animal proteins by vegetable proteins. The mothers identified as ``high consumer of meat'' do not consider the possibility of substituting food with high animal protein content by another food, whereas, ``low consumers of meat'' spontaneously evoke food with high vegetable protein content as an alternative to meat consumption. However, leverage actions towards a rebalancing have also been identified. They could be found more in the smaller portions than in the replacement of a meat product by a vegetable one. Another option would be the access to information through media in order to improve knowledge, and consequently, social representations related to vegetable proteins. (C) 2017 Societe francaise de nutrition. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.