scholarly journals Education for Sustainable Development: Sustainability-Related Food Labels

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8117
Author(s):  
Laura Daniuseviciute-Brazaite

The aim of this study is to predict sustainable behavior based on the awareness of food labels and to assess the role of food quality certification on consumer choice. A quantitative descriptive study was performed to implement the research objectives, while the qualitative data was obtained by an online survey. The sample consisted of 384 subjects; the sample was calculated with 95% reliability and a 5% scattering range. The survey was conducted in August 2020. After rejecting incorrectly completed questionnaires, 392 questionnaires were suitable for further analysis. The study concluded that consumers are not yet familiar with the Lithuanian national food quality system: they are characterized by a relatively low focus on food quality labels. The level of attractiveness and awareness of the Lithuanian NQP label is low: a small proportion of consumers name it as a memorable, clear and targeted food label. The consumers’ behavior is related to the importance of health and nutrition, the price–quality ratio, the regional label (such as Lithuanianness), when raw materials and production are used from/in Lithuania, as well as environmental sustainability.

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-294
Author(s):  
Kimberly B Garza ◽  
Christiana Datubo-Brown ◽  
Philippe Gaillard ◽  
Ruth Jeminiwa

AbstractObjectiveCertain factors, such as food quality, label content and grocery characteristics, may be considered when purchasing foods. Food availability in the home has been shown to influence dietary behaviours, also associated with delay discounting (DD). The present study sought to characterize the relationships between DD, food purchasing considerations and healthfulness of foods in the home.DesignA cross-sectional, online survey of adults (n 477) was conducted with the following measures: DD, consideration of food quality (nutrition, taste) and grocery characteristics (price, ease of preparation, shelf-life) while shopping, use of food labels and food availability in the home. DD was assessed by the area under the delay discounting curve (AUC) using a binary choice task. Greater AUC reflects lower DD. Structural equation modelling was used to allow AUC to simultaneously predict purchasing considerations and foods in the home.SettingOnline survey.ParticipantsAdult employees in south-east Alabama, USA.ResultsDD was negatively associated with food label use and emphasis on food quality when shopping (P<0·001). In the final model, DD was associated with availability of healthful foods in the home and emphasis on food quality and grocery characteristics. About 33 % of the variance in shopping behaviours, 5 % in food label use, 7 % in availability of healthful foods and 4 % in availability of unhealthful foods was explained by DD.ConclusionsIndividuals with lower DD appear to be more thoughtful in making food purchasing decisions and have healthful foods available in the home more frequently than individuals with higher DD.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Isabel Padilla ◽  
Maximina Romero ◽  
José I. Robla ◽  
Aurora López-Delgado

In this work, concentrated solar energy (CSE) was applied to an energy-intensive process such as the vitrification of waste with the aim of manufacturing glasses. Different types of waste were used as raw materials: a hazardous waste from the aluminum industry as aluminum source; two residues from the food industry (eggshell and mussel shell) and dolomite ore as calcium source; quartz sand was also employed as glass network former. The use of CSE allowed obtaining glasses in the SiO2-Al2O3-CaO system at exposure time as short as 15 min. The raw materials, their mixtures, and the resulting glasses were characterized by means of X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, and differential thermal analysis. The feasibility of combining a renewable energy, as solar energy and different waste for the manufacture of glasses, would highly contribute to circular economy and environmental sustainability.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3564
Author(s):  
Arnas Majumder ◽  
Laura Canale ◽  
Costantino Carlo Mastino ◽  
Antonio Pacitto ◽  
Andrea Frattolillo ◽  
...  

The building sector is known to have a significant environmental impact, considering that it is the largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions of around 36% and is also responsible for about 40% of global energy consumption. Of this, about 50% takes place during the building operational phase, while around 10–20% is consumed in materials manufacturing, transport and building construction, maintenance, and demolition. Increasing the necessity of reducing the environmental impact of buildings has led to enhancing not only the thermal performances of building materials, but also the environmental sustainability of their production chains and waste prevention. As a consequence, novel thermo-insulating building materials or products have been developed by using both locally produced natural and waste/recycled materials that are able to provide good thermal performances while also having a lower environmental impact. In this context, the aim of this work is to provide a detailed analysis for the thermal characterization of recycled materials for building insulation. To this end, the thermal behavior of different materials representing industrial residual or wastes collected or recycled using Sardinian zero-km locally available raw materials was investigated, namely: (1) plasters with recycled materials; (2) plasters with natural fibers; and (3) building insulation materials with natural fibers. Results indicate that the investigated materials were able to improve not only the energy performances but also the environmental comfort in both new and in existing buildings. In particular, plasters and mortars with recycled materials and with natural fibers showed, respectively, values of thermal conductivity (at 20 °C) lower than 0.475 and 0.272 W/(m⋅K), while that of building materials with natural fibers was always lower than 0.162 W/(m⋅K) with lower values for compounds with recycled materials (0.107 W/(m⋅K)). Further developments are underway to analyze the mechanical properties of these materials.


Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Casper ◽  
Brian P. McCullough ◽  
Danielle M. Kushner Smith

Political ideology is one of the most powerful predictors of perceptions about environmental sustainability and related behaviors. The purpose of this study was to investigate how sport fans’ sustainability-specific values, perceptions, and norms related to awareness, engagement, and influence of USA collegiate sport sustainability efforts based on political affiliation, accounting for age and gender. Data were collected using an online survey distributed to season ticket holders after the 2019 college football season that featured three sponsored sustainability initiatives at each home game. Multivariate analysis of variance and chi-square difference tests found that self-identified Democrats reported significantly higher pro-environmental values and norms, but sustainability program engagement, sponsored initiatives awareness, and influence of initiatives on behavior were politically neutral. Path analysis found that ascription of responsibility was a significant predictor of sustainability-related engagement and behaviors for both Independents and Republicans. The results and discussion sections highlight how academics and practitioners can account for political affiliation when creating campaign messaging for environmental initiatives.


2010 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonya Ellis ◽  
N. Theresa Glanville

Purpose: Consumers’ use and interpretation of trans fat information on food labels were explored. Methods: Consumers completed an interviewer-administered questionnaire in one of three grocery stores selected purposively to represent geographical location. Data analysis involved examining the relationship of age, gender, grocery shopping habits, household size, and source of nutrition information with awareness, use, and interpretation of trans fat information. Results: Ninety-eight percent (n=239) of participants were aware of trans fat, and most knew of the relationship between trans fat intake and cardiovascular disease. Although the majority of shoppers were aware of the “0 trans fat” nutrition claim on food packages (95%), they were more likely to use the Nutrition Facts panel (60%) to reduce trans fat intake. Men and consumers under age 40 were least likely to be aware of food label information. While most consumers (75%) correctly interpreted the “0 trans fat” nutrition claim and thought foods with this claim could be healthy choices (64%), only 51% purchased these foods to reduce trans fat intake. Conclusions: Nutrition professionals should target messages to reduce trans fat intake at men and consumers under age 40. While general knowledge was good, further education is required to help consumers interpret trans fat information.


2013 ◽  
Vol 04 (03) ◽  
pp. 1350013
Author(s):  
ULRICH HOFFMANN

The problems of climate change, hunger and poverty, economic, social and gender inequity, poor health and nutrition, and environmental sustainability are inter-related and need to be solved by leveraging agriculture's multi-functionality. Against this background, this paper analyzes various aspects of the fundamental transformation of agricultural production methods and systems required for dealing with the serious challenges that arise from global warming. It also discusses the trade-offs to be made in enhancing the mitigation and adaptation potential of agriculture as part and parcel of a pro-poor development approach in agriculture, which will also have to include a modification of international trade rules.


HortScience ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 656-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filippo Sgroi ◽  
Fabrizio Piraino ◽  
Enrica Donia

The considerable diffusion of ready-to-eat products has focused attention on the reasons for their increasingly prominent success in the market. Although their prices are much higher than the prices of simple raw materials, their consumption has increased rapidly and with no end in sight, a situation that has challenged the conclusions of the classical literature on the importance of price and/or income in consumer decisions. In fact, more recent literature has broadened the classical vision by introducing potential additional variables that could influence consumer choice of certain foods. These variables, however, are not always easy and clear to identify because they reflect the cultural characteristics of a society. For this reason, the French scholar Malassis has introduced the concept of a model of food consumption, which, in fact, stems from a concept of food consumption as driven by factors that are not the same for all the societies that might be studied. Among these variables, regarding the consumption of ready-to-eat products, a factor that certainly acts as a driving force in an increasingly frenetic and dynamic society is the time saving that they are able to provide. Thus, it was considered essential to analyze this in a concrete way, through the variance analysis of a sample of 77 subjects resident in the city of Palermo, noting their characteristics in terms of age, education level, and number of nuclear family members. The results obtained indicate that subjects who consumed ready-to-eat products at a higher frequency belonged to a higher age group, had a higher level of education, and belonged to a family that was not particularly numerous. With these results, it can be stated that the consumption of ready-to-eat products is influenced by people’s need to optimize their available time, considered as a real, scarce resource.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6034
Author(s):  
Ine Hugaerts ◽  
Jeroen Scheerder ◽  
Kobe Helsen ◽  
Joris Corthouts ◽  
Erik Thibaut ◽  
...  

The United Nations (UN) considers sports as an important enabler of sustainable development. The popular and fast-growing Participatory Sports Event (PSE) sector can play an important role in this regard, however, research that measures and reports sustainability in PSEs is scarce. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to construct and validate a research instrument based on the UN’s sustainable development goals, and to examine sustainability in PSEs. To this end, an online survey was administered among a representative sample of 303 PSE organisers, located in Flanders, Belgium. A confirmatory factor analysis affirmed the social, economic and environmental dimensions of the instrument and provided evidence for its validity and reliability. The results reveal significant discrepancies between the three dimensions, with a noticeable lower score for environmental sustainability compared to social and economic sustainability. Furthermore, challenges are highlighted in the field of the civil society sector and in walking sports events. The findings also indicate that large-sized events are more likely to be sustainable. The current study can act as a foundation for future research on sustainability in PSEs and can assist PSE organisers and policymakers to increase the sustainability-related performance of the sector.


Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 1095
Author(s):  
Maria João Moreira ◽  
Juan García-Díez ◽  
José M. M. M. de Almeida ◽  
Cristina Saraiva

Food fraud is a growing problem and happens in many ways including mislabelling. Since lack of consumers’ knowledge about mandatory food labeling information and different types of food fraud may impact public health, the present work assesses consumers’ knowledge about these issues. Principal component analysis was performed to obtain a smaller number of uncorrelated factors regarding the usefulness and confidence of information displayed in food labels and the perception of food fraud. Results indicated that information displayed in food labels is useful, however the way it is presented may decrease consumer interest and understanding. Regarding respondents’ confidence in foodstuffs, over half of them stated that information provided in food labels is reliable. However, a lack of confidence about food composition is observed in those processed foodstuffs such as meat products. Food fraud is recognized by more than half of respondents with a higher perception of those practices that imply a risk to public health than those related to economic motivation. Age and education of consumers influenced the perception of the information displayed in the food labels, their confidence and knowledge about food fraud. Implementation of education programs to increase consumer knowledge about food labelling and fraud is essential. Respondents’ perception results could be use as guidelines by the food industry to improve food label design in order to enhance consumer understanding.


Author(s):  
Julia A. Wolfson ◽  
Amelia M. Willits-Smith ◽  
Cindy W. Leung ◽  
Martin C. Heller ◽  
Donald Rose

Shifting consumer behavior towards more sustainable diets can benefit environmental sustainability and human health. Although more frequent home cooking is associated with a better diet quality and fast-food consumption with worse diet quality, the environmental impact of diets based on frequency of cooking or eating fast food is not well understood. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the frequency of cooking dinner at home or eating fast food is associated with dietary greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE). We linked 24-h dietary recall data from adult respondents in the 2007–2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (N = 11,469) to a database of GHGE factors to obtain a measure of dietary GHGE (kgCO2-eq/2000 kcal) (the sum of emissions released in the production of food for an individual’s diet), adjusted by energy intake (kgCO2-eq/2000 kcal). We examined associations between frequency of cooking dinner (the only meal for which cooking frequency was measured), frequency of eating fast food, and dietary GHGE and protein sources (beef, pork, poultry, other meat, and fish and seafood (g/2000 kcal)) using generalized linearized regression models that controlled for age, sex, and other socio-economic characteristics. Greater cooking frequency was associated with higher dietary GHGE. In fully adjusted models, cooking 5–6 times/week was associated with an additional 0.058 kgCO2-eq/2000 kcal (SE 0.033) and cooking 7 times/week was associated with an additional 0.057 kgCO2-eq/2000 kcal (SE 0.027) when compared to cooking 0–2 times/week. Individuals in households who cooked dinner more frequently consumed significantly more meat, poultry, and fish (cooking 7 times/week: 148.7 g/2000 kcal vs. cooking 0–2 times/week: 135.4 g/2000 kcal, p-trend = 0.005), which could explain the association with a higher carbon footprint diet. There were few associations of note between fast-food frequency and GHGE. Policies and interventions that reduce consumption of meat and increase consumption of plants when both cooking meals at home and eating meals out are needed to shift toward diets that will be beneficial for both human health and the health of the planet.


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