Sustainable Food Consumption – Are the Alternative Diet Followers Health and Environment Conscious?

Barna, Fédra Kinga – Szakály, Zoltán – T. Nagy-Pető, Dorka – Bauerné Gáthy, Andrea

Keywords: alternative diet followers, sustainable food consumption, health-conscious, environmentally-conscious, Q01, Q1, Q56

Providing food for a growing population, while minimizing environmental externalities, is becoming a key issue in the current sustainability debate. The aim of this study is to examine the behavioural factors associated with food intake among those who follow a different alternative diet, and also to examine their impact on two elements of sustainable food consumption: health and environmental awareness. In order to achieve our goal, we conducted a national questionnaire among 504 Hungarian consumers, the main elements of which were: alternative diets, food-oriented lifestyle and local products. The responses were weighed for gender representativeness, analysed using descriptive statistical methods and examined for food-oriented lifestyle features using factor and cluster analyses. The results show that while some alternative forms of nutrition show environmental awareness, this is not a sufficient condition for sustainability. Five factors can be distinguished based on claims related to food-oriented lifestyles, such as purchasing motivation, quality aspect, purchasing habits, consumption situations and cooking methods, with three additional sub-factors within the cooking methods category – vocation innovation, easy cooking and the male-female responsibility / role. In the cluster analysis 5 groups were obtained: “Novelty seekers” (27.8%), “Outsiders” (18.8%), “Conservatives” (15.4%), “Average youth” (16.9%) and “Young people with an athletic lifestyle” (21.0%). Of the segments, only the “Novelty seekers” group is considered to be health- and environmentally-conscious.

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