Abstract
Over the last decades, economic, social, and environmental changes have profoundly affected citizen-consumer’s lifestyle and food habits. Current food habits encourage people either to eat more outside home or to a massive use of convenience foods. The consequence is the increasing rate of overweight and obesity through the population and in particular among children. The resulting social and environmental costs are huge. Indeed, it increases government health expenditure as well as environmental pollution due to the large amount of water, fertilizers, and chemicals involved in the production process. The study focuses on these issues aiming at uncovering the aspects able to encourage healthier and more responsible food habits. Specifically, it explores the effects of different parental characteristics on children’s food habits and lifestyle. The study findings reveal a positive effect of parental socio-demographic characteristics (i.e., education and occupation), diet awareness, and lifestyle on children’s food habits and lifestyle, offering practical insights for regulators on how to promote healthier and more sustainable food habits among children.
Highlights
Over the last decades, deep economic, social, and environmental changes have encouraged the raise of new consumers’ requests towards food
The current study explores the effects of parental socio-demographics characteristics, diet awareness, and lifestyle on children’s food habits and lifestyle, to uncover those factors more likely to affect the rate of overweight and obesity among children
Based on the variables investigated, the study findings enable to draw the characteristics of parents having a greater effect in encouraging children to develop and adopt food habits more responsible for both the health and the environment
Summary
Deep economic, social, and environmental changes have encouraged the raise of new consumers’ requests towards food. The increasing rate consumption of convenience foods, mostly high in fat, as well as the lower propensity to meal preparation at home are acknowledged as causes of overweight and obesity (Mancini et al 2012), in particular among children. Food transportation from field to fork and a diet based on a large consumption of animal proteins are both responsible to put large amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, which has detrimental effect on the environment too (Telese et al 2016) To address these issues and promote a more sustainable and responsible consumption, a strategic approach aimed at investigating citizen-consumer’s characteristics able to encourage specific food habits and lifestyles is needed. The study conclusions are summarized in the last section of the manuscript
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