Abstract:
Herbal plant extracts and their isolated bioactive compounds have gained much popularity in the
management of diabetes mellitus. Delivering their benefits across functional foods or
nutraceuticals will offer great future prospects. This comprehensive survey evaluated the
perspective, preference, and prospective consumption behaviour, on antidiabetic food products
and nutraceuticals, by the Sri Lankan consumers and provides an insight into identifying the novel
food types with higher consumer preference for further product developments. The data analysis
and the interpretation were based on the ANOVA and cross-tabulation analysis. The survey data
revealed that 27% of the respondents were moderately aware about antidiabetic food options and
more than half of them (51.56%) preferred antidiabetic products in food form rather than the
nutraceutical form. Further, 85.43% of the respondents preferred consumption of new food
products incorporated with plant materials traditionally known to reduce the risk of diabetes. The
majority of the respondents favoured consuming antidiabetic foods as a snack product (49.82%),
followed by the other different types such as noodles (20.14%) and bakery products (19.11%) as
a breakfast food, ready to serve fruit drink (33.75%), ready to serve herbal drink (23.34%), tea
(32.49%) as beverages, yoghurt (37.10%), curd (23.23%) as dairy products. The nutrient content
of the product (response with 25.27%) and the taste (24.56%) were the major factors that the
respondents indicated as they may consider when selecting a novel food item in the market. It was
further inferred that consumers mostly prefer the tablet form if given as a nutraceutical (38.80%).
According to the Chi-Square test (at p<0.05) the age of the respondents was the major
determinant of the consumer awareness of the anti-diabetic foods/beverages, as well as their
interest in purchasing anti-diabetic foods or nutraceuticals in the market. According to findings,
the majority of respondents preferred to consume functional foods in antidiabetic form than
nutraceuticals, and these findings will be helpful in deciding on novel functional food types for
future development.
