Designing Lifestyle-specific Food Policies Based on Nutritional Requirements and Ecological Footprints.

Expanded understanding of the trends and determinants of food consumption is needed to reduce the ecological impacts of the contemporary agro-food system while also being attentive to broader issues pertaining to health and the environment. Incorporating these additional aspects and formulating meaningful dietary recommendations is a major challenge. This article seeks to highlight differences in ecological footprint (EF) by activity level for various so-cial groups to meet suggested physiological requirements by nutritionists versus actual food consumption. The study is based on a combination of healthy diet requirements (as expressed by national guidelines) and a survey of a repre-sentative sample of 1,013 Hungarian adults using a bottom-up approach for calculating EFs. Students and women with small children have a higher than average food-related EF due to their higher nutritional needs. At the same time, the elderly are characterized by lower footprints. Perhaps most interesting is our finding that people with seden-tary forms of employment have higher food footprints than those with jobs that require physical labor. We offer rec-ommendations for food-policy planning based on encouraging dietary changes for individuals, differentiated by the nature of their work. The research suggests that dietary policy that improves health often has environmental benefits.

Az on-line világban hagyott virtuális lábnyomokban rejlő információk és azok veszélyei (In on-line world leaven virtual footprints information and those dangers)

A mindennapi, szinte folyamatos jelenlét a hálózaton számos melléktermékkel jár. Minden bejelentkezés, üzenet, vásárlás, akció adatok tömegét hagyja az interneten. A cikkben arra kívánnak a szerzők rámutatni, hogy ezeket az adatokat valaki vagy valakik összegyűjthetik, és esetleg olyasmire is használhatják, amihez nem járulnánk hozzá, ha ezt megkérdeznék. A szerzők nem foglalkoznak a rosszindulatú, esetleg bűntények elkövetésének céljára történő illegális adatgyűjtéssel, illetve -hasznosítással, azt kívánták bemutatni, hogy teljesen legális, ún. „white hat” eszközökkel is tartalmas felhasználói profilt lehet összeállítani. Szót ejtenek arról is, hogyan lehet megnehezíteni azok dolgát, akik rólunk szeretnének információt gyűjteni. ____ Everyday, almost continuous presence on the web results number of by-products. Each login, message, shopping, action leaves mass of data on the internet. In this article, the authors wish to point out that these data may be collected by somebody or somebodies. They wanted to introduce you that a meaningful user profile can be compiled by completely legal, so-called „White hat”tools. It also notes about how you can make more difficult their job, who would like to collect information from us.

One More Awareness Gap? The Behaviour–Impact Gap Problem

Preceding research has made hardly any attempt to measure the ecological impacts of pro-environmental behaviour in an objective way. Those impacts were rather supposed or calculated. The research described herein scrutinized the ecological impact reductions achieved through pro-environmental behaviour and raised the question how much of a reduction in carbon footprint can be achieved through voluntary action without actually affecting the socio-economic determinants of life. A survey was carried out in order to measure the difference between the ecological footprint of “green” and “brown” consumers. No significant difference was found between the ecological footprints of the two groups—suggesting that individual pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour do not always reduce the environmental impacts of consumption. This finding resulted in the formulation of a new proposition called the BIG (behaviour–impact gap) problem, which is an interesting addition to research in the field of environmental awareness gaps.