• Energy Research

The food sector is increasingly turning toward sustainability issues. A sustainable food system should provide sufficient, nutritious food for all within limited natural resources. Plant-based food and proteins are a recent, growing trend setting out to contribute to this challenge. However, food industry stakeholders need to be aware of the challenges and opportunities. This paper reviews the trend from a business perspective. It outlines the global drivers, market trends, market data observations, and consumer behavior factors of relevance, and pinpoints the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) for food sector companies. Findings suggest that the policy and market context is favorable in the near future, but that consumer beliefs, perception and understanding has to change further for the business opportunity to grow on a larger scale. More innovations are needed, in particular in the direction of meat-replacements that are healthy as well as clean label.

Plant-based food (PBF) is on the rise as an alternative for animal-based food. Europe is leading in the market size compared with the global market. However, the high failure rate for new food products is challenging the success of new PBF in the market. This paper aims to unravel the key success factors (KSFs) from existing brands, contributing to the knowledge on how to achieve success in PBF market. Two subsequent studies employing online surveys were included, which targeted food expert participants. Study 1 focused on the collection of KSFs related to PBF brands utilizing the card sorting approach. Study 2 employed cluster analysis to further investigate the KSFs among different PBF brands. The findings identified six clusters of KSFs under the external and internal factors supporting the success of the PBF brands. Two (‘Consumer’ and ‘Trend’) and four (‘Ideology’, ‘Marketing strategy’, ‘Innovation management’, and ‘Management structure’) clusters were assigned into external and internal factors, respectively. Furthermore, cluster analysis identified four brand clusters: ‘Mature’, ‘Targeted’, ‘Newcomer’, and ‘Established but diversifying’ clusters. Each brand cluster utilized different KSFs into their strategies; however, both external and internal factors were applied, suggesting that there is no one-size-fits-all KSF to succeed in the market.

The agricultural sector is responsible for a large share of natural resource use and climate impact. A sustainable food system transition requires amongst others that a majority of consumers begins to eat more plant based. However, so far, only a niche or minority of consumers eats primarily plant based. With a conceptual background in positive tipping points in sustainability transitions and social network theory, this paper uses a segmentation analysis of representative consumer survey data in Denmark to characterize segments that differ in psychographic drivers or barriers of meat reduction. From the eight segments found, three are already part of the niche, three emerge as opposed to plant-based, but two are potential next consumers. We discuss how to trigger behaviour change towards eating more plant-rich in ways that match the segments potential motivations and barriers and contribute to literature and work on sustainable food systems transitions.

Abstract The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of enriched energy density and visual topping on maize soup’s intake, overall liking, taste liking, food-evoked emotion and perceived familiarity among older home-dwelling people. This study consisted of two tests: in the first test, the most appetising soup was chosen from six high-energy soups topped with different condiments by testing participants’ rankings based only on appearance; while in the second test, participants tasted the most visually appealing maize soup (high-energy maize soup topped with parsley), as well as topping-free high-energy maize soup and low-energy maize soup. Enriched energy density significantly increased the energy intake of maize soup, and visual topping significantly increased both the weighed intake and energy intake of high-energy maize soup. A combined sensory dimension modification of maize soup by enriching energy density and adding visual topping positively affected weighed intake, energy intake, overall liking and food-evoked emotion of maize soup. Slight changes of meal appearance by adding visually appetising toppings could be an effective method to encourage older consumers’ food consumption. In addition, combined sensory enhancement for food could have synergetic effect on older people’s food consumption and eating experience.

The food that we consume has a large impact on our environment. The impact varies significantly between different diets. The aim of this systematic review is to address the question: Which diet has the least environmental impact on our planet? A comparison of a vegan, vegetarian and omnivorous diets. This systematic review is based on 16 studies and 18 reviews. The included studies were selected by focusing directly on environmental impacts of human diets. Four electronic bibliographic databases, PubMed, Medline, Scopus and Web of Science were used to conduct a systematic literature search based on fixed inclusion and exclusion criteria. The durations of the studies ranged from 7 days to 27 years. Most were carried out in the US or Europe. Results from our review suggest that the vegan diet is the optimal diet for the environment because, out of all the compared diets, its production results in the lowest level of GHG emissions. Additionally, the reviewed studies indicate the possibility of achieving the same environmental impact as that of the vegan diet, without excluding the meat and dairy food groups, but rather, by reducing them substantially.