IS428 2016-17 Term1 Assign2 Timothy Tan Swee Guang

Perception and Data: How the media influences perceptions of consumption patterns around the world

Problem and Motivation

With the ubiquitous presence of the media in everyday life, it is easy for us to form conscious or unconscious perceptions of different societies based on what the media portrays it to be. For example, the media always depict European meals as fresh and healthy (I.e. Italian Pastas, Paella from Spain, Greek Salads or fresh fish from the Netherlands) whilst associating fast-food or unhealthy foods to countries like the US or Canada. But is this really true? Or is the media truly biasing our perceptions?

This study aims to explore how media can influence our perceptions on how we perceive differing countries consumption patterns. Through the use of food facts, the study attempts to proxy how media bias our views on how healthy or unhealthy a country truly is through its advertisements on what they eat.This study will proxy products availability in a country as an indicator of what people eat in that country.

Health Indicators

Healthy Measures (per 100g)
- Fiber
- Fruits, Vegetables and Nuts
- Monounsaturated Fat
- Omega 3 Fat
- Polyunsaturated Fat
- Proteins

Unhealthy Measures (per 100g)
- Alcohol
- Fat
- Salt
- Saturated Fat
- Sugars
- Trans Fat

Approaches

Data Preprocessing

1. Removed "Null" Product Names
2. Treated "Countries_en" column
- Delimited multivalued cells
- Stacked Columns
3. Treated "main_category_en" column
- Removed names with ":" by formula

4. Standardized "Product_Category_D1" to start with lowercase to resolve double-counting issues
5. For the measures, only attributes that seem to be good predictors of health were kept.
- Data points without any measures were excluded (22,026 rows were filtered out due to all 26 measurements missing [this 26 includes the measures of interest]. Leaving 39,996 rows left for analysis)
6. Organized Groupings
- Grouped Countries by Continents
- Grouped Measures by Folders

Research Questions

1. What products are the different countries consuming?
2. What product contents are the different countries consuming?
3. What are some of the patterns of products available in each country?
4. How healthy or unhealthy are these products?
5. Which continent eats the healthiest?
6. Are there different patterns of consumption between Europe and America as showcased on television?
7. Are these patterns align to what media portrays them to be?
8. If Europe and America's consumption patterns differ, what are they consuming differently? What are the reasons for these differences?

Link to Interactive Dashboard

https://public.tableau.com/profile/timothy.tan5930#!/vizhome/TableauA2/TheExplorer

Analysis

Healthiest Continent

Figure 1a

In terms of healthy measures (Figure 1a), Europe seems to be consuming greater amounts of healthy products than any other continents. Europeans seem to eat fruits, vegetables and nuts more than most countries and also take more monounsaturated fat more. This higher intake of monounsaturated fat comes to no surprise as Europeans do appear to have their meals with olive oil and cook with it more often than other countries.

Figure 1b

What is interesting is that, we can see the exact same type of pattern when it comes to the intake of polyunsaturated fat in Asia, specifically, Hong Kong (Figure 1b). The intake of this particular type of fat is due to the oils (I.e. Sesame oil, Sunflower Oil, Canola Oil etc.) Asians tend to use to cook with. A stark difference in types of oil usage for cooking can clearly be seen here between the Europeans and Asians.

Consumption Differences: Europe vs America

Figure 2a

Comparing the consumption patterns of Europeans and Americans (Figure 2a), it does seem like Europeans consume healthier products than Americans. Having said that, Europeans and Americans do not seem to differ much in terms of their unhealthy products consumption. This pattern seem to show support to what media portrays on television that Europeans do eat healthy. However, it is noteworthy to point out that the media might be choosing to portray European cuisine as being healthy and giving a twisted perception of American cuisine as being unhealthy. This can be inferred as there are no clear difference between the continents in terms of unhealthy product consumption.

Consumption Differences: A Deeper Look

Figure 2b

Tools Utilized

1. Excel 2013 for data preparation
2. SAS Enterprise Guide for data preparation
3. JMP-PRO for data preparation
4. Tableau for visualization

References

http://www.webmd.com/diet/obesity/features/skinny-fat-good-fats-bad-fats#1
http://statisticstimes.com/geography/countries-by-continents.php