Approaches for reducing wastes in the agricultural sector. An analysis of Millennials' willingness to buy food with upcycled ingredients

Consumers acceptance of new food ingredients from the food industry's by-products-a focus group study

Food industry by-products can be valorized by extracting various nutritional components, like proteins, dietary fiber or other bioactive compounds, depending on the type of by-products. By adding these to new or already existing food products, the consumers' health and wellbeing may increase due to a more nutritional diet while at the same time increasing the sustainability of the food chain. However, for a successful market implementation of products containing ingredients from by-products, the consumer perception and consumer acceptance are one of the most important aspects that need to be considered. Therefore, focus group studies were organized in four European countries, namely Italy, Germany, Romania and Norway, to investigate the perception, acceptance and willingness of the general population (ages 18-60) to buy these new products. When possible, individual purchasing and consumption trends were analyzed as well to get a deeper insight into the decision-making processes during grocery shopping. In summary, the acceptance of new food ingredients from by-products was high in all four studied countries, and most participants were interested in enriched bakery, meat or dairy products. The main reason for the interest in these new products were health benefits due to an increased nutrient uptake, and to contribute to reducing food waste. However, participants were afraid of new food allergies and intolerances as well as increased concentrations of food contaminants like pesticides or mycotoxins, which makes food safety an important point to consider before developing new products.

Innovative approaches to harnessing natural pigments from food waste and by-products for eco-friendly food coloring

With unprecedented growth in the world population, the demand for food has risen drastically leading to increased agricultural production. One promising avenue is recovery of value-added pigments from food waste which has been gaining global attention. This review focuses on sustainable strategies for extracting pigments, examining the factors that influence extraction, their applications, and consumer acceptability. The significant findings of the study state the efficiency of pigment extraction through innovative extraction techniques rather than following conventional methods that are time-consuming, and unsustainable. In addition to their vibrant colors, these pigments provide functional benefits such as antioxidant properties, extended shelf life and improved food quality. Societal acceptance of pigments derived from food waste is positively driven by environmental awareness and sustainability. The study concludes by highlighting the stability challenges associated with various natural pigments, emphasizing the need for tailored stabilization methods to ensure long-term stability and effective utilization in food matrices.

Exploring the Sustainability of Upcycled Foods: An Analysis of Consumer Behavior in Taiwan

Given the urgent climate change and food security challenges, upcycled food products are crucial for sustainable food production and waste management. This study investigates Taiwanese consumer behavior towards upcycled foods using the value-attitude-behavior (VAB) theory, focusing on "product knowledge", "green perceived quality", and "price sensitivity". Of the 335 distributed surveys, 320 valid responses (95.5% effectiveness) were analyzed. The results indicated that eco-conscious values strongly influenced consumer attitudes and anticipated guilt (β = 0.647, p < 0.001; β = 0.691, p < 0.001), shaping behavioral intentions (β = 0.290, p < 0.001). Attitudes significantly correlated with intentions, validating the VAB framework. However, anticipated guilt showed a minimal impact (β = 0.029, p = 0.629), revealing complex consumer emotions. Green perceived quality and product knowledge were the key decision-making factors (β = 0.193, p < 0.001; β = 0.146, p < 0.001). Surprisingly, price sensitivity positively influences intentions (β = 0.764, p < 0.001), suggesting the consumer prioritization of quality and environmental values over price. These insights inform strategies for businesses to enhance consumer engagement and sustainability alignment, advancing progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Determinants of Consumers' Acceptance and Adoption of Novel Food in View of More Resilient and Sustainable Food Systems in the EU: A Systematic Literature Review

This review article aims to provide an up-to-date overview of the main determinants of consumers' acceptance of novel foods (new foods and ingredients) in the EU with emphasis on product's intrinsic properties (sensory characteristics) and individual factors (socio-demographics, perceptive, psychological) by adopting a systematic approach following the PRISMA methodology. Case studies on terrestrial (i.e., insects, cultured meat and other animal origin products, plant-based food including mushrooms, plant-based analogues, pulses, and cereals) and aquatic systems (i.e., algae and jellyfish) are included focusing on age-related and cross-national differences in consumer acceptance of novel foods and ingredients. General trends have emerged that are common to all the novel foods analysed, regardless of their aquatic or terrestrial origin. Aspects such as food neophobia, unfamiliarity, and poor knowledge of the product are important barriers to the consumption of novel foods, while healthiness and environmental sustainability perception are drivers of acceptance. Sensory properties are challenging for more familiar ingredients such as plant-based food (e.g., novel food made by pulses, mushrooms, cereals and pseudocereals). Results are discussed in terms of feasibility of introducing these products in the EU food systems highlighting strategies that can encourage the use of new ingredients or novel foods.

A review of organic and inorganic amendments to treat saline-sodic soils: Emphasis on waste valorization for a circular economy approach

Soil salinization poses a significant challenge to the sustainable advancement of agriculture on a global scale. This environmental issue not only hampers plant growth and soil fertility but also hinders the advancement of the national economy due to restrictions on plant development. The utilization of organic and/or inorganic amendments has demonstrated the ability to mitigate the detrimental impacts of salt stress on plant life. At the outset, this review, in addition to summarizing current knowledge about soil amendments for saline-sodic soils, also aims to identify knowledge gaps requiring further research. The organic or inorganic amendments modify soil conditions and impact plant development. For instance, organic amendments have the potential to improve the structure of the soil, augment its capacity to retain water, and stimulate microbial activity. As this occurs, salts gradually leach through the porous structure of the soil. Conversely, inorganic amendments, such as gypsum and phosphogypsum, displace sodium from soil-negative sorption sites reducing the salinity, they also increase base saturation, altogether positively impacting plant growth conditions. This review emphasizes that, under adequate rates, the combination of organic and inorganic amendment has a high potential to enhance the poor physicochemical properties of saline-sodic soils, thereby reducing their salinity. Consequently, an in-depth examination of the mineral composition, texture, and chemical composition of the soil is required to choose the most effective amendment to implement. Future research necessitates a thorough investigation of techno-economic and life cycle assessment, with active involvement from stakeholders, to enhance the decision-making process of the amendments in specific localities.

Impact of circular economy information on sensory acceptability, purchase intention and perceived value of upcycled foods by young consumers

The acceptability of upcycled foods is influenced by individual, context and product-related factors. This study aimed at investigating the impact of circular economy (CE) information on consumers' sensory acceptability, purchase intention and perceived value of upcycled foods, taking into account eating behaviours and personality traits that could be related to the consumers' sustainable consumption habits. To this aim, a group of young subjects (n = 80, 18-35 years old) participated in a two-step study. Firstly, an online questionnaire was administered to participants to gather information about their individual characteristics. Then, participants were divided into two groups, one receiving CE information (CE+) and one not receiving it (CE-), and they were asked to indicate the sensory acceptability, purchase intention and the perceived value of three upcycled foods, such as biscuits with grape pomace flour, beer brewed with leftover bread and a dairy product made from recovered crushed cheese. Questionnaire results showed that high individual responsibility, interest in healthy foods and high awareness of the social impact of their behaviours could be linked to a positive purchase intention for upcycled foods, as opposed to individual disgust sensitivity. No significant effect of CE information (p > 0.05) on sensory acceptability and purchase intention of all three upcycled foods was observed. Moreover, application of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to the sensory data resulted in satisfactory classification of upcycled foods in terms of perceived values, explaining 86.83 % of data variability: the first principal component discriminated samples according to product category whereas the second principal component was able to clearly separate products according to CE information. Findings from this study provided valuable insights into the key individual characteristics that impact sustainable consumption habits, also highlighting the role of communication strategies in shaping consumer perceptions of upcycled foods so as to encourage a more sustainable consumption behaviour.

Consumer acceptance of upcycled craft beer: a New Zealand case study

Upcycled foods are created from surplus food, edible food waste and by-products. Food and beverage brands are launching upcycled foods and promoting their product to consumers. Little is known about how consumers respond to upcycled foods, nor how these products can be most effectively promoted. To better understand marketing strategies for upcycled foods, two studies were conducted, one online (n = 300) and one in retail stores (n = 65), in New Zealand to examine differences in consumer sentiment toward upcycled beer. In both studies, environmental benefits were identified as the most important benefits of upcycled foods and information provision on pack and online were important promotional strategies. Consumers reported greater awareness and acceptance of upcycled food in-store, yet raised concerns relating to taste and price. Only 31% of participants surveyed in-store associated 'no negatives' with upcycled foods compared with 47% of consumers surveyed online. These findings help differentiate a potential promotion strategy for upcycled foods.

Current Perceptions of Sustainable Diets in Ireland and the Outlook of Circular Eating Practices

Encouraging sustainable dietary practices is a positive step towards alleviating the negative impact of increasing food waste. This study explores consumers' perceptions of sustainable diets and factors influencing their adoption of sustainable practices, such as circular eating. Fifteen consumers in Ireland aged 18-65+ years were recruited for a qualitative study exploring their views on sustainable diets and their opinions on the use of peels, trimmings, and other by-products from fruit and vegetables as potential new ingredients or new circular food products. Age, gender, dietary preferences and educational background were important considerations during recruitment. Online interviews were conducted, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis managed by NVivo 12. The results highlighted two overarching themes impacting circular eating, namely, food choice motives and awareness of food waste. These were linked to the participants' knowledge of and potential adoption of sustainable diets. Daily trade-offs were evident, linked to the product and the person who was also strongly influenced by their micro-environment. Consumer education from credible sources would be required to create awareness of circular eating. Most respondents were positively disposed to the concept of circular eating, as long as food safety concerns and affordability considerations were addressed through industry transparency.

Upcycling in the context of biotechnology-based solutions for food quality, loss, and consumer perception

Wasted food is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gases. Globally, attempts are being made to both reduce surplus food and divert it into food-to-food operations. This opinion piece covers upcycling and biotechnology-mediated solutions on a technology continuum as a part of the bigger whole to solve this problem. Upcycling is an approach to divert foods that would otherwise be wasted into higher uses that would also have tangible benefits to the environment and society. Likewise, biotechnology can help farmers produce crops with longer shelf life and that satisfy cosmetic standards. Uncertainty, either in the form of food safety, technology, or neophobia in the case of upcycled foods or genes (cisgenic or transgenic) in the case of biotechnology, is a hurdle. Communication and consumer perception should be researched. Both upcycling and biotechnology can provide practical solutions, but their acceptance depends on communication strategies and consumer perception.

European Consumers Attitudes toward Ethnic Foods: Case of Date Fruits

This study focuses on the perception of ethnic foods by European consumers. The aim of this work is to enrich the literature on the analysis of consumer perception of ethnic foods by focusing on the socio-demographic characteristics of consumers, the possible role played by product attributes, psychographic characteristics, and willingness to pay for these products, specifically date fruits. We surveyed a representative sample of 1123 Italian and French consumers. Using an ordered logit model, we found that, as for any other product, geographical indication, region of production, organic character, and fair trade are attributes that individuals consider in their purchase decisions for ethnic foods. Similarly, country of origin is a source of quality for ethnic foods such as dates. The results reveal that women, more educated individuals, and Generation Z (younger individuals) have a higher willingness to pay for organic, fair trade, and GI-labeled ethnic foods. Finally, this willingness to pay is driven more by product knowledge than by cognitive closeness to the ethnic food.

Are Local Dairy Products Better? Using Principal Component Analysis to Investigate Consumers' Perception towards Quality, Sustainability, and Market Availability

Consumers are increasingly aware of the benefits of local foods in terms of quality, sustainability, animal welfare, and safety. This research addresses two main questions: (i) is the perception towards sustainability aspects of local dairy products related to individuals' preferences for milk and cheese quality aspects? (ii) are these perceptions related to people's socio-demographic characteristics? For this purpose, a choice experiment was conducted online in Apulia (South-East Italy) involving a sample of 543 respondents. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied to analyze the consumer opinion related to dairy products' quality attributes, sustainability, and availability on the market. From the PCA, four main components (accounting the 64.5% of the total explained variance) were defined, highlighting non-overlapping choice styles of consumers, distinguished by attitudes primarily based on quality attributes of dairy products rather than sustainability characteristics or perceived higher quality of local products. Furthermore, the Availability request component described the consumer need for higher availability and/or visibility of local dairy products on the market. The effect of gender, age, and educational status of individuals emerged as significantly important for the resulting component definitions. The obtained results clearly suggest the need to increase the efficiency of communication strategies concerning local dairy products, as well as local dairy products' availability and visibility on the markets.

Perceived Consumer Effectiveness and Willingness to Pay for Credence Product Attributes of Sustainable Foods

While perceived consumer effectiveness has consistently been linked to socially conscious attitudes, such as sustainable consumption decisions, the concept appears to have been confounded with other related constructs in the empirical studies measuring its effects on consumer buying intentions and consumer behaviour. A sustainable food consumer evaluation is based on product values and credibility to health, origin, environment, and ethical concerns. The research aimed to examine if sustainability-related perceived consumer effectiveness has an impact on purchase intention and willingness to pay for sustainable food products, in order to provide information on the pricing of sustainable foods. The study was carried out using a quantitative approach on a sample of 1204 young consumers using a self-administered online questionnaire. The results indicated a significant positive relationship between perceived consumer effectiveness and consumers’ willingness to pay a premium price for sustainable food attributes. Based on this willingness to pay a premium price for food products, a WTP Index was developed. The findings revealed that perceived effectiveness has a strong connection with the buying intention of food products with sustainable attributes.

Driving Management of Novel Foods: A Network Analysis Approach

The food industry has confronted, in recent years, numerous issues including meeting a food demand for individual well-being in a sufficient and healthy manner, also due to the effects of the world population growth. In this scenario, alternative food sources may be a key element both for their contribution to food needs and for the promotion of sustainable and innovative production patterns. These food sources, new compared to traditional food styles, have been regulated by specific European Union regulations under the definition of novel foods. Their importance in the world has raised different topics of scientific research. The present paper aimed to seize the direction of scientific studies in the world focused on the thematic area of novel foods, from a management point of view. This study analyzed 209 papers and carried out a descriptive analysis and a network analysis of the thematic areas under examination also with the help of the software VOSviewer. The results highlighted the importance of scientific research in the world also for the contributions on the exploration of existing markets as well as for the innovative solutions it provides, which aim to expand market possibilities. Finally, the existence of several elements and factors, which may discourage the propensity to consume and therefore the development of the novel foods market, seemed to emerge, and for this reason, many surveys focused on finding solutions to overcome these potential obstacles.

A Quantitative and Qualitative Study of Food Loss in Glasshouse-Grown Tomatoes

Reducing food loss and waste (FLW) is one strategy to limit the environmental impact of the food supply chain. Australian data suggest that primary production accounts for 31% of national FLW, but there are no comparable data in New Zealand. This study aimed to measure food loss and explore food loss drivers for one of New Zealand’s largest tomato growers by weighing and visually assessing tomato losses at the glasshouse, packhouse and sales warehouse. Qualitative interviews were also held with the grower (n = 3), employees (n = 10), and key industry stakeholders (n = 8). Total food loss for this greenhouse tomato grower was 16.9% of marketed yield, consisting of 13.9% unharvested tomatoes, 2.8% rejected at the glasshouse and 0.3% rejected at the packhouse. The grower’s tomato loss predominantly resulted from commercial factors such as market price, competitor activity and supply and demand. Similar issues were recognized throughout the New Zealand horticulture sector. Commercial factors, in particular, are challenging to address, and collaboration throughout the supply chain will be required to help growers reduce food losses.

Challenges for Upcycled Foods: Definition, Inclusion in the Food Waste Management Hierarchy and Public Acceptability

Upcycled foods contain unmarketable ingredients (e.g., damaged food produce, by-products and scraps from food preparation) that otherwise would not be directed for human consumption. Upcycled food is a new food category and thus faces several challenges, such as definition development, inclusion in the food waste management hierarchy and public acceptability. This review provides an overview of these three challenges. The upcycled food definitions have been developed for research, food manufacturers, and multi-stakeholders use. Thus, there is a need for a consumer-friendly definition for the general public. A simplified definition is proposed to introduce these foods as environmentally friendly foods containing safe ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to human consumption such as damaged food produce, by-products and scraps from food preparation. Moreover, an updated version of the food waste management hierarchy has been proposed by including the production of upcycled foods as a separate waste management action that is less preferable than redistribution but more favourable than producing animal feed. Furthermore, consumer sociodemographic characteristics and beliefs, as well as food quality cues and attributes, were identified as crucial factors for the public acceptability of these foods. Future research should address these challenges to facilitate the introduction of upcycled foods.

Sustainable Consumption in Consumer Behavior in the Time of COVID-19: Topic Modeling on Twitter Data Using LDA

By using text mining techniques, this study identifies the topics of sustainable consumption that are important during the COVID-19 pandemic. An Application Programming Interface (API) streaming method was used to extract the data from Twitter. A total of 14,591 tweets were collected using Twitter streaming API. However, after data cleaning, 13,635 tweets were considered for analysis. The objectives of the study are to identify (1) the topics users tweet about sustainable consumption and (2) to detect the emotion-based sentiments in the tweets. The study used Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm for topic modeling and the Louvain algorithm for semantic network clustering. NRC emotion lexicon was used for sentiment analysis. The LDA model discovers six topics: organic food consumption, food waste, vegan food, sustainable tourism, sustainable transport, and sustainable energy consumption. While the Louvain algorithm detects four clusters—lifestyle and climate change, responsible consumption, energy consumption, and renewable energy, sentiment analysis results show more positive emotions among the users than the negative ones. The study contributes to existing literature by providing a fresh perspective on various interconnected topics of sustainable consumption that bring global consumption to a sustainable level.

Household Food Metabolism: Losses, Waste and Environmental Pressures of Food Consumption at the Regional Level in Spain

Dealing with an increasing population is challenging the global food system not only in productive terms, but also through the associated environmental pressures. A growing diagnostic effort is being made by global and national agencies. Innovative approaches are needed to support effective policy efforts. This study aims to illustrate the potentialities of the household metabolism approach in the diagnosis of the environmental pressures derived from household food consumption, using the Spanish regions and the effects of the 2008 crisis as case studies. The direct information concerning food consumption in physical terms provided by the Spanish household budget survey is used to estimate some relevant environmental pressures (food losses and waste along the food chain, as well as water and carbon footprint) for the Spanish food system at a sub-national level. These data are directly translated into differences in environmental pressures and compared with other dietary profiles. Furthermore, the physical information of environmental pressures is related to household socio-economic status, showing the potentialities of the association with household socio-economic information. Finally, our data illustrate with some examples how the economic crisis has acted as a driver of change in food consumption, promoting a better environmental performance at the cost of poorer diets.