Research report Survey into the seafood consumption preferences and patterns in the portuguese population. Gender and regional variability q Carlos Cardoso ⇑ , Helena Lourenço, Sara Costa, Susana Gonçalves, Maria Leonor Nunes Unit of Upgrading of Fishery and Aquaculture Products (U-VPPA), Portuguese Institute for the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA), Avenida de Brasília, 1449-006 Lisbon, Portugal article info Article history: Received 29 August 2012 Received in revised form 14 December 2012 Accepted 18 December 2012 Available online 11 January 2013 Keywords: Seafood Consumption survey Consumer preferences Consumption frequencies Gender Geographical location abstract With the purpose of achieving a deeper knowledge of one of the most important seafood markets in Eur- ope, a survey into the seafood consumption preferences and patterns in the Portuguese population was carried out. A thorough, comprehensive, and simple questionnaire was developed. Consumers were asked to state their preferences towards fish products, their consumption frequencies, the average meal portion, and the usual culinary treatments. Respondents provided personal data: gender, age, geographical loca- tion, education level, weight, height, and health condition. This paper presents the first part of the study’s results, focusing mainly on the gender and regional variables. Portuguese consumers prefer wild to cul- tured fish as well as fat to lean fish. Chilled fish is preferred over frozen, salted/dried, canned, and smoked fish, being the latter the least preferred. Soaked cod, hake, and canned tuna are the most eaten seafood products. Men prefer to a greater extent wild and smoked fish. Men consume more cephalopods and sar- dine and women eat more frequently hake, pink cusk-eel, and redfish. Coastal populations prefer wild fish. Algarve (southern Portugal) consumers exhibit a stronger tendency to wild and whole fish and con- sume more sardine and sole. Madeira archipelago consumers are particularly fond of black scabbard fish. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Seafood, particularly fish, is a nutrient-rich food source that is widely available (IOM, 2007), being their consumption recom- mended due to several nutritional benefits (ISSFAL, 2004). In gen- eral, dietary recommendations advise weekly consumption of one to two portions of fat fish (ISSFAL, 2004). In fact, fish and other seafood products are a good source of high quality protein, low in saturated fat, and rich in many micronutrients (like selenium and some vitamins). They are also a good source of long chain poly- unsaturated omega-3, particularly eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) fatty acids (Nunes, Bandarra, Oliveira, Batista, & Calhau, 2006). In the past years, research has implicated seafood, particularly its contribution of EPA and DHA, in various health benefits associated to the developing foetus and infants, and also to adults, including those at the decreased risk of cardio- vascular disease (IOM, 2007). So, the high nutritional quality of fish and seafood products makes them an essential component of a healthy diet (IOM, 2007). Portugal is the European Union country with higher average an- nual per capita seafood consumption, about 56 kg (FAO, 2009), cor- responding to a 160 g meal of seafood per day. Moreover, with an Exclusive Economic Zone exceeding 1,700,000 km 2 and 942 km coast line, the fishery and the consumption of fish products are of extreme importance. Therefore, a deeper knowledge of the pref- erences and patterns of seafood consumption by the Portuguese population as well as an assessment of the underlying dynamics is warranted. In order to achieve such knowledge, detailed con- sumer surveys (down to the species level) are of paramount impor- tance. In their absence, any probabilistic assessment of the risks and benefits of seafood consumption by any given population re- quires to assume hypothetical distributions (Cardoso, Bandarra, Lourenço, Afonso, & Nunes, 2010). Indeed, such surveys have been carried out in several other countries, such as, Spain (FROM, 2011), France (CREDOC-AFFSA-DGAL, 1999) or the U.S.A. (Ruffle, Burmaster, Anderson, & Gordon, 2006), and used for the assessment of the risks and benefits associated to seafood consumption (Tressou, Crépet, Bertail, Feinberg, & Leblanc, 2004). For instance, in the United States, using more complete data on the overall consumption of all fish by the general population (from a survey conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service), strong log-normal fits were found and applied to other countries and circumstances (Cardoso et al., 2010). Hence, these 0195-6663/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2012.12.022 q Acknowledgments: This work was supported by the project ‘‘GOODFISH’’, Ref. PTDC/SAU-ESA/103825/2008 funded by ‘‘Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia’’ (FCT). The authors thank Dr. Isabel Castanheira, Dr. Narcisa Bandarra, Dr. Cláudia Afonso, Eng. Irineu Batista, and Dr. Maria Fernanda Martins for their help in the elaboration and dissemination of the survey. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: ccardoso@ipma.pt (C. Cardoso). Appetite 64 (2013) 20–31 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Appetite journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/appet