Friedl, B., Hammer, M., Jäger, J., Lorek, S., Omann, I., Pack, A. (2007)
Abstract
This report presents results from the second year of the Global Change project “Sustainable Food Consumption: Trends and Opportunities”. The objectives of the project are to contribute to a transition to more sustainable food consumption in Austria through an improved understanding of food consumption patterns and trends and their direct environmental impacts, to identify and discuss key policy options forenhancing sustainable food.
In Chapter 2, we identify relevant socio-economic driving forces for food consumption and analyse these drivers for different household and different food categories. After analysing the household food consumption of an average household, we compare different socio-economic groups by the factors of age, income, education, employment status and family type. Older people consume more vegetables and fruits than meat in comparison to younger age groups. In particular, younger people have a higher (relative) preference for dried, smoked and salted meat, minced meat, rice, pasta products, bread and fruiting and flowering vegetables, which could reflect the time convenience dependency in the diets of young people. Lower income households respond mainly to price and look for filling foods. They have a higher relative consumption of potatoes (instead of root, fruiting and flowering vegetables), apples and pears (instead of exotic fruits) and lower absolute figures in bottled beverages. Income has no influence on total consumed quantities of meat, but only on the consumption of beef. High income households consume a higher share of beef, whereas low income households substitute beef with higher amounts of pork. Diets of higher income households respond to time scarcity with higher consumption figures for foods that can be quickly prepared (dried, salted and smoked meat, cheese, curd and yogurt). People with higher education consume more vegetables, fruits, bread, rice, flour and pasta in contrast to meat. The dietary choices of higher educated households are generally dependent on three factors: taste, time scarcity and health and/or environmental awareness.
Diets of rural households are largely made up of traditional foods like bread, flour, apples, pears and pork. Dietary choices of employees, irrespective of their position, and the self-employed are driven mostly by time constraints. This argument is based on a higher preference for food products that need less time for preparation (e.g. dried, salted and smoked meat instead of pork, fruiting and flowering vegetables instead of potatoes) by both labour force status groups. The income factor may be the reason why employees in top positions have the highest share of beef and veal consumption. Household food consumption reflects structures within families, due to different tastes but also because of nutritional aspects (e.g. higher recommended calcium intake for children). Accordingly, households without children (couple households, adult households) have highest consumption figures of vegetable, fruits and meat, whereas single parents, family households and single households consume markedly less. By focusing the analysis within the categories of vegetables, meat and fruits, it can be stated that the family type has only a weak influence on food preferences. The only relevant trend is that households without children have a stronger preference for beef, at the expense of pork and poultry, which are very popular among family households.
In Chapter 3, environmental impacts of food consumption are calculated according to two indicators: CO2 equivalents emissions for the issue of climate change and material input for the issue of resource use. The effect on both was calculated separately and then compared. We have built on the preferences of household categories for different forms of meat, vegetables and fruits and then compared the impacts of those preferences to those of an average household. In general one can say that the preference effects of meat are much larger than the effects of fruits and vegetables, which means that being sustainable in the preferences for vegetables and fruits can not compensate being unsustainable in the category of meat. The highest impacts for both indicators are given for top employee households and for high income households, followed by highly educated households and singles. Young households also have negative impacts compared to the average household; however they are much stronger in the case of material inputs. Farm households and households of low and middle position people contribute less to emissions and material use, because of traditional eating habits.
These results do not, however, give any indications about the environmental impacts due to quantities consumed; to get a first impression we have calculated the relative shares of different food categories by socio-economic groups. We have to modify the conclusion for those households who have a strongly positive preference effect (except for young households). While they consume less sustainable types of particularly meat, they have higher shares of vegetables and fruits relative to meat. In other words, their overall combination of meat, fruit and vegetables is more sustainable than on average, making their classification as unsustainable consumer groups more ambiguous.
Based on the results and on a stakeholder workshop, recommendations for (policy) measures are developed in Chapter 4. Thus policies, in particular aiming at influencing the behaviour of younger, wealthy people and those in high positions are seen to be a very efficient way of changing the trend. But as this group represents only a small share of all Austrian households, the big group of low and middle position households should be addressed as well and encouraged (via information campaigns, subsidies, CO2 taxes etc.) to keep their traditional eating habits AND to consume more organic food and less meat. Besides giving recommendations for the most relevant socio-economic group we also focus on measures that lead to reduced consumption of the most unsustainable food category, which is meat, and here especially beef and dried, salted, smoked meat. Measures that raise awareness and change behaviour, that are given in an appealing way via the media that appeal to the different groups are recommended.
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