A change for the better? Digital health technologies and changing food consumption behaviors

Much of the existing literature in the area of food and consumer behavior concerns consumer evaluation of individual products. However, obesity and other food related health conditions typically occur as a result of poor diets and lifestyle, rather than poor individual product choices. As consumers, we generally have an imperfect understanding of our diet and lifestyle and use heuristics to process complex diet and lifestyle information. Increasingly, as ubiquitous computing applications in the area of food and consumption proliferate a number of questions arise about how consumers are using these technologies to assist them in processing their diet and lifestyle information. This article addresses this juncture by integrating streams of research in food consumption, information processing and technology adoption to better understand consumer interaction with Digital Health Technologies to assist in information processing. As this represents a relatively new stream of research in an area of growing importance the article develops a conceptual framework about consumer interaction with Digital Health Technologies and identifies a number of pertinent questions for future research to examine.