Environmental Issues as Drivers for Food Choice: Study from a Multinational Framework

Abstract

This work intended to explore some motivations that influence people’s eating habits towards sustainability. This was an observational, cross-sectional study, carried out by questionnaire survey on a non-probabilistic sample of 10,067 participants from 13 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Romania and United States). Results indicated that people prefer fresh local foods from the season, being important because it allows transportation and storage to be reduced, which in many cases implies refrigeration systems and consequent energy expenditure. Although people avoid food waste at home, the awareness for the waste at restaurants still needs to be improved. Consumers seem to prefer foods that have been produced and packed in sustainable ways but still give importance to the package—understandable for food products. The results also indicated significant differences in the food choice motivations between groups for all sociodemographic variables tested (age, sex, marital status, education, professional area, living environment and country), but the association was high only for variable country. Additionally, a tree classification analysis allowed to identify the relative importance of the influential variables on the sustainable food choices, with country being the most important, followed by age and sex. Additionally, discriminant function analysis allowed establishing a model for the relation between country and six variables accounting for preservation of biodiversity, respect for life, save natural resources, save energy, reduce industrial pollution and minimal packaging. Although with some limitations, this study brings valuable insight into some aspects linked with sustainable food choices on a number of countries and how people shape their food choices according to some sustainability issues.

Plastic Food Packaging: Perceptions and Attitudes of Portuguese Consumers about Environmental Impact and Recycling

“…The variable accounting for the level of knowledge about recycling was submitted to a tree classification analysis to assess the relative importance of the sociodemographic variables. The analysis followed the CRT (Classification and Regression Trees) algorithm with a cross-validation and a minimum change in improvement of 0.0001, considering a limit of 5 levels and a minimum number of cases for parent or child nodes equal to 20 and 15, respectively [36]. A level of significance of 5% was considered in all statistical analyses.…”

Food Composition Databases: Does It Matter to Human Health?

“…The urge of the food systems' transformation is such that, among many initiatives, the UN organised a food system summit in 2021 (https://www.un.org/en/food-systems-summit accessed on 17 August 2021), available online at the data of this publication and the European Union issued a climate law that binds the EU Institutions and the Member States to take the necessary measures to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. On the other hand, a growing awareness from consumers about the impact of their individual food choices in their health and the environment has been registered [51]. Shifts in food habits may fuel the desired changes, but the commitment of food producers is key.…”

“…Moreover, still according to these authors, only a few compounds within a class are investigated, and there are knowledge gaps on appropriate analytical methods for food analysis. The acknowledged complexity of foods (in their multiple dimensions) calls for information on multiple relationships, as the nexus between public health and the environment, or consumer preference and health [51,52,78,79]. Ocké et al [9], besides identifying some gaps herein mentioned, also refer to the need for FDBs' adaptation to the rapidly changing food landscape and the need for their improvement and harmonization to enable comparisons of research outputs at international level.…”

“…• Fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts: divided into vegetables (303), potatoes and other tubers(51), legumes(38), fruits (170), and nuts and seeds (52); • Cereal products: pasta, rice, and grains (71), breads and similar(56), and savoury biscuits (18);•…”

Critical Factors in Developing Sustainable Food Packaging

“…It can secure food, cause food able to be carried or moved, and communicates to markets (Muncke et al 2020;Tiekstra et al 2021). In Europe, Asia, and America, the consumers were mainly intending to make use of novel or sustainable food packages (Aday and Yener, 2015;Guiné et al 2021). Currently, plastic, the non-biodegradable plastic packaging utility, and the daily use of plastic is the most significant contributor to the waste.…”