Understanding health cues and engagement patterns in Finnish digital food culture : A study on the Valio.fi recipe platform
Littunen, Kiia (2025)
2025
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025120532880
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025120532880
Tiivistelmä
Food has increasingly become a digital experience, giving rise to a digital food culture where culinary practices blend with media and technology. Online recipe platforms now influence how people learn about nutrition and make dietary choices. These platforms use simplified labels such as “lighter” or “high protein” to signal healthiness, yet the link between such perceived cues and objective nutritional quality remains unclear. In Finland, Valio.fi offers a relevant setting to examine this relationship through its combination of nutritional information and user engagement.
By examining the data from Valio.fi, this study investigates how perceived and objective indicators of healthiness affect user engagement, and what other factors might explain why some recipes attract more interaction than others. Quantitative analyses were applied to compare health-related labels with nutritional measures such as energy, fat, sugar, and salt content. Statistical tests and correlation analyses were used to examine how nutritional and perceived health characteristics relate to user engagement within Finnish digital food culture.
The results showed that the platform’s health-related labels corresponded well with the actual nutritional composition of recipes. However, these labels and nutritional quality were only weakly associated with user engagement. Recipes with healthier compositions did not consistently receive higher number of ratings or comments. Instead, engagement was more strongly linked to other dimensions of content, such as recipe complexity, cultural familiarity, and the tendency for already popular recipes to attract further attention. These findings suggest that nutritional healthiness alone does not drive engagement within Finnish digital food culture.
The study demonstrated that while health information and labels are widely available and accurate, they appear to play only a minor role in attracting user interaction. Instead, engagement appeared to be influenced by general content and contextual factors, and to follow visibility dynamics typical of online environments, where popular content accumulates further attention. These results suggest that interest in healthy eating is present but not a dominant factor in online interaction. The findings provide insight into user preferences within Finnish digital food culture.
By examining the data from Valio.fi, this study investigates how perceived and objective indicators of healthiness affect user engagement, and what other factors might explain why some recipes attract more interaction than others. Quantitative analyses were applied to compare health-related labels with nutritional measures such as energy, fat, sugar, and salt content. Statistical tests and correlation analyses were used to examine how nutritional and perceived health characteristics relate to user engagement within Finnish digital food culture.
The results showed that the platform’s health-related labels corresponded well with the actual nutritional composition of recipes. However, these labels and nutritional quality were only weakly associated with user engagement. Recipes with healthier compositions did not consistently receive higher number of ratings or comments. Instead, engagement was more strongly linked to other dimensions of content, such as recipe complexity, cultural familiarity, and the tendency for already popular recipes to attract further attention. These findings suggest that nutritional healthiness alone does not drive engagement within Finnish digital food culture.
The study demonstrated that while health information and labels are widely available and accurate, they appear to play only a minor role in attracting user interaction. Instead, engagement appeared to be influenced by general content and contextual factors, and to follow visibility dynamics typical of online environments, where popular content accumulates further attention. These results suggest that interest in healthy eating is present but not a dominant factor in online interaction. The findings provide insight into user preferences within Finnish digital food culture.