scholarly journals Consumer Perspectives on Processing Technologies for Organic Food

Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 1212
Author(s):  
Ronja Hüppe ◽  
Katrin Zander

Over the last years, consumer demand for natural and healthy convenient food has increased, and with it the demand for organic convenience food. With convenience food, the processing level increases, which consumers are sceptical of. This holds especially for organic consumers who prefer natural, healthy, and sustainable food products. In the literature, consumer preferences are investigated for processed conventional food, but rarely for organic products. Therefore, this study investigates consumers’ knowledge, expectations, and attitudes towards selected processing technologies for organic food. Nine focus groups with 84 organic consumers were conducted, discussing preservation technologies of organic milk and orange juice. Results showed that participants had little knowledge about processing technologies but were interested in their benefits. Organic processing technologies should include fewer processing steps, low environmental impact, while keeping the product as natural as possible. Since consumers want to know benefits but not details of processing, asking consumers for their specific preferences when developing new processing technologies remains challenging. This paper shows how consumers’ benefit and risk perception including their want for naturalness, and scepticism for new technologies shape their evaluation of (organic) food processing technologies. Two consumer groups with different attitudes towards processing could be identified: ’organic traditionalists’ and ‘organic pragmatics’.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 5718-5725 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunsriwiang Benchamas ◽  
Shiyu Huang ◽  
Gangliang Huang

The influence of traditional processing technologies and new technologies on the structure and function of food polysaccharide was investigated and discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7028
Author(s):  
Ellen J. Van Loo ◽  
Fien Minnens ◽  
Wim Verbeke

Many retailers have expanded and diversified their private label food product assortment by offering premium-quality private label food products such as organic products. With price being identified as the major barrier for organic food purchases, private label organic food products could be a suitable and more affordable alternative for many consumers. While numerous studies have examined consumer preferences for organic food, very few organic food studies have incorporated the concept of private labels. This study addresses this research gap by studying consumer preferences and willingness to pay for national brand and private label organic food using a latent class model. Specifically, this study analyzes consumer preferences for organic eggs and orange juice and the effect of national branding versus private label. Findings show heterogeneity in consumer preferences for production method and brand, with three consumer segments being identified based on their preferences for both juice and eggs. For eggs, about half of the consumers prefer private label and organic production, whereas one-quarter clearly prefers organic, and another quarter is indifferent about the brand and the organic production. For orange juice, the majority (75%) prefer the national brand. In addition, one-quarter of the consumers prefers organic juice, and about one-third values both organic and the national brand.


Antioxidants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Monika Mieszczakowska-Frąc ◽  
Karolina Celejewska ◽  
Witold Płocharski

Nowadays, thermal treatments are used for extending the shelf-life of vegetable and fruit products by inactivating microorganisms and enzymes. On the other hand, heat treatments often induce undesirable changes in the quality of the final product, e.g., losses of nutrients, color alterations, changes in flavor, and smell. Therefore, the food industry is opening up to new technologies that are less aggressive than thermal treatment to avoid the negative effects of thermal pasteurization. Non-thermal processing technologies have been developed during the last decades as an alternative to thermal food preservation. Processing changes the structure of fruit and vegetables, and hence the bioavailability of the nutrients contained in them. In this review, special attention has been devoted to the effects of modern technologies of fruit and vegetable processing, such as minimal processing (MPFV), high-pressure processing (HPP), high-pressure homogenization (HPH), ultrasounds (US), pulsed electric fields (PEF), on the stability and bioavailability of vitamin C.


Author(s):  
Chiara M. Posadinu ◽  
Monica Rodriguez ◽  
Fabio Madau ◽  
Giovanna Attene

Abstract The valorization of plant genetic resources and their direct use in local markets can make a significant contribution to the preservation of agrobiodiversity, while also contributing to the sustainability of rural communities. Indeed, plant genetic resources are a precious source of genes, and they represent an important crop heritage for the quality and sensory characteristics that are required by both farmers and consumers. However, an efficient strategy of agrobiodiversity conservation is strictly connected to product marketability and to consumer preferences. In the present study, choice experiments that involved 920 consumers were carried out to determine their willingness to pay for ancient local tomato varieties (landraces) rather than commercial varieties based on their preferences, and to determine how much they valued these products. The results obtained indicate that consumers are willing to pay premium prices for ancient local tomato varieties (an additional €0.90 kg−1), thus demonstrating their increasing attention to sustainable food and the willingness to contribute to agrobiodiversity conservation and enhancement. These results provide the basis for planning strategies and programs to support the cultivation of these landraces and the development of regional and national markets to acknowledge their characteristics, which will considerably increase the effectiveness and efficiency of conservation strategies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 1507-1525
Author(s):  
E.A. Aleshina ◽  
◽  
A.A. Leksina ◽  
Zh. S. Dossumova ◽  
◽  
...  

Organic agriculture, based on natural production technologies, obtains a great potential for reversing humanity to a healthy diet and living in harmony with nature by improving the state of the ecosystem. The share of organic food products in the market of the developed countries is already quite high; and various institutional systems of the industry have been introduced and are being improved in the leading countries of the world. Domestic agribusiness is currently lagging behind in these matters, but the situation should be significantly changed by the adopted law and state standard regulating the requirements for the organic sector. In this regard, an objective need arose to substantiate the capabilities and the resource potential of the Saratov region in this sphere. Within the framework of the presented research, an interdisciplinary fundamental platform to develop the theory of the organic food products market was formed. As a result, the elements of the scientific methodology (theories, principles, factors, methods) of its functioning were identified, which made it possible to substantiate the potential capacity of the regional consumer market for organic food. The calculation was made taking into account the rational norms of food consumption that meet modern requirements for a healthy diet, the heterogeneity of consumer preferences, the price gap for the main conventional and organic products in retail and the dispersion of prices for the latter, the implementation of state policy to protect and improve the health of certain population groups. This study is intended for the state management bodies of the agro-industrial sector, the leadership of agricultural, processing and marketing enterprises, the structures of wholesale and retail food products trade and branch research institutions.


1989 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.L. Dreifus ◽  
R.M. Kolbas ◽  
B.P. Sneed ◽  
J.F. Schetzina

ABSTRACTLow temperature (<60° C) processing technologies that avoid potentially damaging processing steps have been developed for devices fabricated from II-VI semiconductor epitaxial layers grown by photoassisted molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). These low temperature technologies include: 1) photolithography (1 µm geometries), 2) calibrated etchants (rates as low as 30 Å/s), 3) a metallization lift-off process employing a photoresist profiler, 4) an interlevel metal dielectric, and 5) an insulator technology for metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) structures. A number of first demonstration devices including field-effect transistors and p-n junctions have been fabricated from II-VI epitaxial layers grown by photoassisted MBE and processed using the technology described here. In this paper, two advanced device structures, processed at <60° C, will be presented: 1) CdTe:As-CdTe:In p-n junction detectors, grown in situ by photoassisted MBE, and 2) HgCdTe-HgTe-CdZnTe quantum-well modulation-doped field-effect transistors (MODFETs).


2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Farkasa ◽  
Cs. Mohácsi-Farkas

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5778
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Dudziak ◽  
Monika Stoma ◽  
Andrzej Kuranc ◽  
Jacek Caban

New technologies reaching out for meeting the needs of an aging population in developed countries have given rise to the development and gradual implementation of the concept of an autonomous vehicle (AV) and have even made it a necessity and an important business paradigm. However, in parallel, there is a discussion about consumer preferences and the willingness to pay for new car technologies and intelligent vehicle options. The main aim of the study was to analyze the impact of selected factors on the perception of the future of autonomous cars by respondents from the area of Southeastern Poland in terms of a comparison with traditional cars, with particular emphasis on the advantages and disadvantages of this concept. The research presented in this study was conducted in 2019 among a group of 579 respondents. Data analysis made it possible to identify potential advantages and disadvantages of the concept of introducing autonomous cars. A positive result of the survey is that 68% of respondents stated that AV will be gradually introduced to our market, which confirms the high acceptance of this technology by Poles. The obtained research results may be valuable information for governmental and local authorities, but also for car manufacturers and their future users. It is an important issue in the area of shaping the strategy of actions concerning further directions of development on the automotive market.


2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Kuchler ◽  
Katherine Ralston ◽  
J. Robert Tomerlin

AbstractThis paper examines whether the dollar value of health benefits that consumers derive from organic food could account for the price premiums they pay. Price and sales data from realized transactions are inadequate to reveal consumer preferences for health benefits. Our exploratory alternative method estimates the value of health benefits to a hypothetical consumer who assesses risks as risk assessors do and values a unit reduction in all fatal risks equally, regardless of the source of any risk. Under these assumptions, our estimates of the value of health benefits derived from substituting an organic diet for a conventionally produced diet approach zero. For a common organic product, apple juice, we estimated the cost of reducing risks by buying the organic characteristic. The cost of averting each adverse health outcome is 27 to 461 times as large as the value of benefits. If the characteristics of our hypothetical consumer match those of the typical consumer, two inferences follow from our estimates of benefits and costs. First, the typical consumer is unlikely to purchase organic food for health reasons. Second, consumers who choose organic food could differ from typical consumers in several dimensions: perceptions of the level of risk from dietary intake of pesticides, perceptions of the nature of adverse health outcomes from pesticides, or in the importance attached to other attributes of organic food. Our analysis is exploratory partially because there are several behavioral assumptions implicit in the values we calculate. Also, we focus on risks that can be quantitatively estimated, measuring the probability of an adverse health outcome with readily accessible data. Currently, only cancer risks can be measured in terms of probabilities from readily accessible data.


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