Making groundwater visible: a contribution for classifying hydrogeological research and knowledge by KINDRA H2020 project

Water Directives, Science, Policy, groundwater, societal challenge

Evalution through artificial neural networks of the sociodemographic Influences on food choices

Introduction: 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.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Romanian Consumers’ Willingness to Buy Foodstuffs Containing Food Additives: Results of a Conjoint Study

Results of the literature and the authors’ previous studies showed consumers’ high anxiety regarding food additives as well as their high demand for additive-free products in Romania, even at higher prices. Hence, the aim of our work was to analyse the willingness to buy and preference of foodstuffs containing natural and artificial food additives in Romania.A complex conjoint analysis (rating-based and choice-based) was performed amongst Romanian consumers. Conjoint cards were created from two groups of food additives (‘preservatives’ and ‘packaging gases’), and consisting of two ‘model foodstuffs’ (pre-packed sliced cheese and chips). For the study, three factors were selected: ‘preservatives’ (artificial/natural), ‘packaging gases’ (contains/does not contain) and ‘price’ (average+10%/average+20%). Results were collected via the internet and data were analysed with the help of SPSS Conjoint and XLSTAT softwares. ‘Preservatives’ have a dominant importance and ‘natural preservatives’ have a high utility in shopping decisions. ‘Natural’ compounds have higher importance in the example of foodstuffs thought to contain less food additives (pre-packed sliced cheese), while the presence of ‘packaging gases’ is acceptable to respondents in easy to handle and convenient foodstuffs. With the help of the cluster analysis, the promising target group (‘desire for natural’) characterising additive-free foodstuffs  that contain natural compounds was identified. Restricted comparison of the rating-based and the choice-based analysis showed that the choice-based method was easier to handle and understand for the participants. Regarding the results, a threefold conclusion was established: the ‘prominence effect’ is greater for the choice-based than the rating-based analysis; the effect of ‘level focusing’ is smaller in the rating-based than in the choice-based analysis; the ‘compatibility effect’ the rating-based analysis resulted higher importance of enriched attributes in contrast to the comparable attribute. Romanian consumers need for ‘natural’ compounds and price-sensitive attitude have to be taken into consideration during the product development and production phases. </p

Study about some environmental factors that determine people’s food choices in 16 different countries

In 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.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Lestvica motivov prehranjevanja (EATMOT) : Razvoj in validacija instrumenta s konfirmatorno faktorsko analizo (CFA) in modeliranjem strukturnih enačb (SEM)

The objective was to develop and validate an instrument that measures different determinants of people's food choices and simultaneously accounts for a variety of factors: health, emotions, price and availability, society and culture, environment and politics, and marketing and advertising. This is a cross-sectional study focusing on food choice determinants. It was carried out in 16 countries in 2017 and 2018. This study included 11,960 volunteer adult participants from different countries. The data was validated using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Validation using CFA with SEM revealed that multi-factor modelling produced first- and second-order models that could be used to define the EATMOT scale, the first presenting better fitting indices, with the goodness-of-fit and comparative-fit indices very close to 1, as well as root-mean-square-error-of-approximation, root-mean-square-residual and standardised-root-mean-square-residual at practically zero. The validated EATMOT scale guarantees confidence in the information obtained through this instrument, and can be used in future studies to better understand food choice determinants in different geographical areas and help plan strategies to improve healthy eating patterns and diminish the burden of non-communicable diseases. </p

Benefits of dietary fibre to human health: study from a multi-country platform

Purpose: Because dietary fibre has been recognized as a major ally to the maintenance of a healthy body as well as to help against the development of some chronic diseases, this work aimed at studying the level of knowledge of a relatively wide range of people about the health effects related to the ingestion of dietary fibre in appropriate dosages. Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study was undertaken on a non-probabilistic sample of 6010 participants. The data were collected from 10 countries in 3 different continents (Europe, Africa and America) and measured the level of knowledge regarding different health benefits from dietary fibre. The questionnaires were applied by direct interview after verbal informed consent. Findings: The results obtained considering the general level of knowledge revealed a considerable degree of information about the benefits of fibre (average score of 3.54±0.5, on a scale from 1 to 5). There were significant differences between genders (p<0.001), with higher average score for women, and also for level of education (p<0.001), with higher score for university level. The living environment also showed significant differences (p<0.001), with people living in urban areas showing a higher degree of knowledge. Also for countries the differences were significant (p<0.001), with the highest score obtained for Portugal (3.7), and the lowest for Croatia, Italy, Latvia, Macedonia and Romania (3.5). However, despite these differences, the results showed that for all the countries the degree of knowledge was good (above 3.5), corresponding to a minimum level of knowledge of 70%. Originality/Value: This work is considered important due to the wide coverage, including so many countries inclusive with different social and cultural settings. The study allowed concluding that, in general, the participants in the study were quite well informed about the benefits of dietary fibre for the improvement of human health, regardless of gender, level of education, living environment or country. This finding is very relevant considering the diversity of people that composed the sample and reinforces the necessity of continuing with educational policies aimed at providing the general population with the knowledge that might help them make appropriate food choices.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio