Book Description

It is widely known that food markets have a high environmental impact, which needs to be minimized in order to help mitigate climate change. Governments and international institutions can help improve the sustainability of global food production; however, consumers’ decisions have an important role in influencing food market stakeholders’ choices towards sustainable food sources and low-emission practices. Understanding consumers' awareness of the importance of choosing sustainable diets and their capability to adapt their individual decision-making, is pivotal to stimulating or improving consumers’ willingness to move towards choosing climate-friendly food and avoiding food waste. There are many factors that influence people’s food choices from cultural and ethical acceptability, visual attractiveness, taste agreeability, and economic affordability, which change depending on the geographical areas and targeted group of people. Thus, to orient consumers’ food choices many challenges need to be considered, including making consumers aware of organic food health and environmental benefits, nutritional high protein alternatives to meat, and offering affordable solutions. The aim of this Research Topic is to collect different perspectives on consumers’ food choices in relation to the environmental sustainability issue. This would support the decision-makers and food systems stakeholders to move towards sustainable food production. Thus, this collection wishes to highlight the consumers’ point of view on the trade-off between personal habits and food preferences, and climate-friendly choices in geographical areas, including the awareness of the impact that the diet choice may have on the environment. This collection welcomes submissions on the following themes, but are not limited to: • Consumers' perception of the diet’s impact on climate change issue • Consumers' food choice drivers • Cultural acceptability of alternative protein sources • Consumers’ willingness to purchase organic food • Trade-off availability between sustainable and affordable food choice