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- Study about some environmental factors that determine people’s food choices in 16 different countriesPublication . Guiné, Raquel; Ferreira, Manuela; Correia, Paula; Leal, Marcela; Ferreira, Vanessa; Rumbak, Ivana; EL-Kenawy, Ayman; Papageorgiou, Maria; Szucs, Viktória; Vittadini, Elena; Klava, Dace; Bartkiene, Elena; Munoz, Lucia; Korzeniowska, Malgorzata; Tarcea, Monica; Djekic, Ilija; Bizjak, Masa; Isoldi, KathyIn the ambit of the multinational project EATMOT undertaken in 16 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and United States of America) a study was undertaken to evaluate the motivations for food choices as influenced by variables linked to sustainability. In this way aspects related with minimization of transportation and storage of food products, minimization of package or use of eco-materials, respect for animal’s rights and policies of recovery of food surplus were studied. The food sector is a very important one and greatly contributes to the pressure over the ecosystems, either because a great amount of food is produced, many times in intensive regimens, to feed humans on earth or because those foods are nowadays traded all over the world, contributing for the increase of the ecological footprint, and most especially if the transportation requires refrigeration systems. Hence, nowadays consumers may be aware of these problems and condition some of their food choices to these aspects. The research was undertaken by means of a questionnaire survey on nearly 12 thousand participants, from the 16 countries cited above. Briefly, the results indicated that, in general the concerns with environment and sustainability are important for most of the participants. Specifically, 55.2% preferably choose foods form the season and 49.15 prefer to buy local foods. About half of the participants (50.4%) opt for foods that comply with sustainable processing and packaging and the minimal usage of packaging is important to 49.1%. While a great majority, 70.7% try to avoid food waste at home, when it to comes to frequenting restaurants that do not have a recovery policy of food surplus the percentage is much lower, only 18.6%. The animal´s rights are a conditioning factor for food choice for about half of the participants, 49.8%. Still, it was observed that many of the participants did not manifest their opinion, with a percentage varying between 17.2 and 46.7%. These findings are important to understand the level of commitment of the general population around the world with sustainability factors determining their food choices and on the other hand show that there is still an important part of the population that do not take care about sustainability aspects when buying or consuming food, which something that we do several times everyday and year after year.
- Level of information about dietary fibre: a study involving 10 CountriesPublication . Guiné, Raquel; Leal, Marcela; Rumbak, I.; Baric, I.; Komes, D.; Satalic, Z.; Saric, M.; Tarcea, M.; Fazakas, Z.; Jovanoska, D.; Vanevski, D.; Yalcin, E.; Vittadini, E.; Pellegrini, N.; Szucs, V.; Harangozo, J.; El-Kenawy, A.; El-Shenawy, O.; yalcin, E.; Kosemeci, C.; Klava, D.; Straumite, E.Introduction: Dietary fibre (DF) is recognized as healthy for long, so that health claims are allowed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) due to its proved benefits, extended but not only confined to many diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. Objective: This work intended to analyse the level of information about DF in 10 countries, situated in Europe, Africa and South America. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was undertaken through a survey based on a questionnaire of self-response applied to a sample of 6010 participants. The data were lately treated by factor and cluster analyses, including validation methodologies. Results: Factor analysis showed that ten of the twelve items used to assess the knowledge about DF could be arranged into two factors: one related to health effects (α =0.854) and the other to the sources (α =0.644). Furthermore, cluster analysis showed that the participants could be divided into three groups: 1) Good knowledge about sources and health effects of DF; 2) Good knowledge about the sources of DF but poor knowledge about the health effects; 3) Poor knowledge about the sources and health effects of DF. Conclusions: The results clearly allowed identifying two factors and three clusters, and the variables that most influenced cluster membership were country, living environment and level of education.
- Determinants of economic motivations for food choice: insights for the understanding of consumer behaviourPublication . Martinho, Vítor; Bartkiene, Elena; Djekic, Ilija; Tarcea, Monica; Barić, Irena Colić; Černelič-Bizjak, Maša; Szűcs, Viktória; Sarcona, Alessandra; El-Kenawy, Ayman; Ferreira, Vanessa; Klava, Dace; Korzeniowska, Małgorzata; Vittadini, Elena; Leal, Marcela; Bolhuis, Dieuwerke; Papageorgiou, Maria; Guiné, Raquel P. F.Food consumption involves several dimensions, being some of them directly associated with the consumers’ characteristics. The interrelationships between these domains impact consumer behaviour for food choice and the consequent decisions for food consumption. In these frameworks, economic motivations are determinant. On the other hand, the scientific literature highlights that the economic-based stimuli to choose food is still underexplored. In this perspective, the objective of this study was to assess the main sociodemographic and anthropometric determinants of the economic motivations for food choice. For that, a questionnaire survey was carried out involving 11,919 respondents from 16 countries. A validated questionnaire was used, translated into the native languages in all participating countries, using a back-translation process. First, the information obtained was assessed through factor analysis to reduce the number of variables associated with the economic motivations and to identify indexes. After, and considering the indexes obtained as dependent variables, a classification and regression tree analysis was performed. As main insights, it is highlighted that the main determinants of the economic motivations are country of residence, age, gender, civil state, professional activity, educational level, living environment, responsibility for buying food, weight, height, body mass index, healthy diets and physical exercise practices. Additionally, the results also reveal that economic motivations may be associated with two indexes, one related to convenience attitudes and the other to quality concerns. Finally, the younger persons and the women are the social groups more concerned with healthy diets and food quality. In conclusion, this work confirmed that food choice is to a high extent influenced by several sociodemographic and behavioural factors.
- Perceções sobre alimentação saudável e fatores emocionais ligados ao comportamento alimentar: estudo envolvendo Portugal, Brasil e ArgentinaPublication . Cardoso, Ana Paula; Ferreira, Vanessa; Leal, Marcela; Ferreira, Manuela; Guiné, RaquelO comportamento humano relativamente à alimentação está associado a um conjunto vasto de fatores, incluindo os de natureza psicológica. Com o presente estudo pretende-se analisar as perceções sobre uma alimentação saudável, bem como fatores emocionais condicionantes do comportamento alimentar de uma amostra da comunidade universitária de Portugal, Brasil e Argentina. Para isso, foi levado a efeito um estudo descritivo, de corte transversal, envolvendo uma amostra não probabilística de 2501 participantes. Os dados foram recolhidos através de um questionário anónimo aplicado a cidadãos adultos residentes nos respetivos países. Os resultados revelam que as perceções dos participantes são, em geral, concordantes com uma alimentação saudável. Contudo, encontram-se diferenças significativas entre os países (2=8.026; p=0.018) e por níveis de escolaridade (2=21.041; p<0,001), com uma perceção mais correta para Portugal e para o nível universitário. De salientar que os fatores emocionais estão significativamente associados a todas as variáveis sociodemográficas consideradas (país, idade, sexo, estado civil, nível de escolaridade, local de residência, área de estudos/profissional). Tal sugere que estes fatores são importantes para perceber os comportamentos da população no que concerne à alimentação saudável e, em especial, as diferenças quanto às variáveis individuais. Importa, pois, considerar estes fatores nas iniciativas que visam promover a adesão a comportamentos que contribuam para a saúde e bem-estar da população.
- Romanian versus European Practices towards Dietary FibersPublication . Tarcea, Monica; Nemes, Levente; Szucs, Victoria; Pellegrini, Nicoletta; Straumite, Evita; Erkan, Yalcin; Leal, Marcela; Guiné, RaquelIntroduction: The goal of our study was to evaluate the Romanian practices regarding dietary fibers from food products versus other European countries. Methods: We made a qualitative survey based on a questionnaire applied in 2015, over 670 Romanian consumers from different counties, focused on the practices and knowledge towards ingestion of foods rich in fibers. The same questionnaire was applied in other 7 European countries, part of an international project design. Results: Our results showed that ingestion of food rich in fibers (fruits, vegetables and whole grains) were lower than european recommendations. The female participants ate more whole grains and fruits than males (p<0.001) and pay more attention to food labelling, also knowledge about fibers benefits was significantly related to education and urban location. Regarding the differences by countries, the highest fruit consumption was found for Portugal (11.7 portions per week), while the lowest was for Latvia (7.1). Young European females, with more than high school education, were most interested in fibers and considered internet and television like main sources of information. Conclusion: We emphasize the needs for more efficient community interventions for young people about the importance of dietary fibers for non-communicable diseases prevention and a healthy lifestyle.
- Influence of sociodemographic factors on eating motivations – modelling through artificial neural networks (ANN)Publication . Guiné, Raquel; Ferrão, Ana Cristina; Ferreira, Manuela; Correia, Paula; Mendes, Mateus; Bartkiene, Elena; Szűcs, Viktória; Tarcea, Monica; Sarić, Marijana Matek; Černelič-Bizjak, Maša; Isoldi, Kathy; EL-Kenawy, Ayman; Ferreira, Vanessa; Klava, Dace; Korzeniowska, Małgorzata; Vittadini, Elena; Leal, Marcela; Frez-Muñoz, Lucia; Papageorgiou, Maria; Djekić, IlijaThis study aimed at investigating the influence of some sociodemographic factors on the eating motivations. A longitudinal study was carried conducted with 11960 participants from 16 countries. Data analysis included t-test for independent samples or ANOVA, and neural network models were also created, to relate the input and output variables. Results showed that factors like age, marital status, country, living environment, level of education or professional area significantly influenced all of the studied types of eating motivations. Neural networks modelling indicated variability in the food choices, but identifying some trends, for example the strongest positive factor determining health motivations was age, while for emotional motivations was living environment, and for economic and availability motivations was gender. On the other hand, country revealed a high positive influence for the social and cultural as well as for environmental and political and also for marketing and commercial motivations.
- Evalution through artificial neural networks of the sociodemographic Influences on food choicesPublication . Guiné, Raquel; Ferrão, Ana Cristina; Correia, Paula; Ferreira, Manuela; Mendes, Mateus; Leal, Marcela; Ferreira, Vanessa; Rumbak, Ivana; El-Said, Ayman; Papageorgiou, Maria; Szucs, Viktória; Vittadini, Elena; Klava, Dace; Bartkiene, Elena; Munoz, Lucia; Korzeniowska, Małgorzata; Tarcea, Monica; Djekic, Ilija; Bizjak, Maša; Isoldi, KathyIntroduction: The EATMOT Project is a multinational study that is being carried out in 16 countries about different eating motivations, given their recognized importance in the definition of people’s dietary patterns. Objective: This study investigated the influence of sociodemographic factors on some types of eating motivations, specifically: health related factors; economic and availability aspects; emotional determinants; social, cultural and religious influences; marketing and advertising campaigns and finally environmental concerns. Methods: This is a longitudinal observational study carried out on a non-probabilistic sample with 11960 participants. For the analysis of the data were used the T-test for independent samples or ANOVA with Post-Hoc Tukey HSD, depending on the case. The modelling through artificial neural networks included 7 input variables (sociodemographic characteristics) and 6 output variables (the eating motivations’ groups). Results: Variables like age, marital status, country, living environment, level of education or professional area significantly influenced all the types of eating motivations analysed. However, regarding gender, no significant differences were observed for two of the six types of motivations analysed: economic & availability and marketing & commercial. The results of the ANN modelling showed that the strongest positive factors determining the eating motivations were age for health, country for emotional motivations, gender for economic & availability, country for social & cultural, country for environmental & political, and finally country also for the marketing & commercial motivations. Conclusions: These results highlight the importance of the sociodemographic characteristics as determinants for eating patterns around the globe, and particularly the geographic location.