In recent decades, the food industry has been faced with new challenges, and it has had to develop new types of diets and produce new types of foods that can slow down the spread of chronic diseases. The aim of our research was to identify the characteristics of plant-based nutrition, based on international and Hungarian literature. The comprehensive analysis was performed based on the theoretical model called Theory of Planned Behavior, in the course of which the perceived and objective benefits of and barriers to the conversion to a plant-based diet were examined. According to our results, the main benefits of plant-based nutrition are its many factors associated with a reduction in risk of developing numerous chronic diseases. This is followed by benefits of well-being and satisfaction, followed by ethical and environmental benefits. The most commonly reported inhibitory factor of a vegetarian diet is the enjoyment of eating meat and the difficulty in giving up meat consumption. This is followed by health considerations, e.g., lack of various ingredients in foods. Convenience and taste factors are also important disincentives, as well as the irrelevant nature of some plant-based nutrition information sources. Besides, social barriers, negative discrimination, and negative effect on mental health associated with them can also be a hindrance, as can financial barriers. The classification developed during our analysis can serve as a relevant guideline for decision-makers, and also as a basis for further primary qualitative and quantitative research.

Background: Despite the increasing number of personalized nutrition services available on the market, nutrigenomics-based level of personalization is still the exception rather than a mainstream activity. This can be partly explained by various factors of consumer acceptance of the new technology. While consumer attitudes toward genetic tests aiming to reveal the risks of a predisposition to various illnesses have already been examined by several research studies worldwide; consumer acceptance of nutrigenomics-based personalized nutrition has only been examined by a significantly lower number of papers, especially in the Central and Eastern European region. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer acceptance of genetic-based personalized nutrition in Hungary. Therefore a national representative survey was conducted involving 1000 individuals. The starting point of the model used is the assumption that the consumer acceptance of personalized nutrition is influenced by its consumer perceptions, which are affected by psychological processes that, in a more general sense, determine acceptance of food innovations. Results: The results show that 23.5% of respondents accept genetic test-based personalized nutrition. Women were found to reject the new technology in a significantly smaller proportion than men. The relationship between other demographic variables (i.e. age groups, education and subjective income level) and the perception of genetic-based personalized nutrition is also significant. Our results indicate that it is perceived cost/benefit that is most strongly related to genetically based personalized dietary preferences, followed by perceived risk and subjective norms. Perceived uncertainty and perceived behavioural control, however, have only a weak relationship with genetic-based personalized dietary preferences. Conclusions: Compared with the magnitude of the effect of socio-demographic criteria, it can be concluded that, on the whole, psychological processes in the individual have a greater influence on the development of preferences for genetic-based personalized nutrition than any socio-demographic factor. This also confirms the trend that there are more and more value-added products or value propositions (where a significant part of the value added is to be found in product innovation), for which psychological characteristics are/should be given more emphasis among the segmentation criteria.

Several theories have emerged to study types of eating behavior leading to obesity, but most of the applied models are mainly related to food choice decisions and food consumer behavior. The purpose of this paper was to examine the eating attitudes of Hungarian consumers by applying the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ-R21). The national representative questionnaire involved 1000 individuals in Hungary in 2019. Several multivariate statistical techniques were applied for the data analysis: exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, multivariate data reduction techniques, and cluster analysis. This study successfully managed to distinguish the following factors: emotional eating, uncontrolled eating, and cognitive restraint. By using the factors, five clusters were identified: Uncontrolled Emotional Eaters; Overweight, Uncontrolled Eaters; Controlled, Conscious Eaters; the Uninterested; and the Rejecters; all of these could be addressed by public health policy with individually tailored messages. The empirical results led to rejection of the original Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire (TFEQ-R21), while the TFEQ-R16 model could be validated on a representative sample of adults, for the first time in Hungary.

Our study fills a gap because we were the first to examine the eating motivations of the Hungarian population using the TEMS questionnaire. Our aim was to analyze the eating motivations of Hungarian consumers in details. To this end, we launched a national questionnaire survey of 1,000 people, which is representative by gender, age, type of settlement, and region. In our survey, we obtained 8 well separated factors, which are the following: Social Anxiety, Comfortable Enjoyment, Health Awareness and Weight Control, Price Sensitivity, Social Eating, Self-Rewarding, Habit and Tradition-Driven Eating, The Tempting Nature of Food. Based on cluster analysis, we classified consumers into 5 clusters: Traditional Simplifiers, Thrifty Social and Emotional Eaters, Balanced Self-Rewards, Health Conscious, Indifferent.JEL-Codes: A13, D70, I12, Q56 Tanulmányunk hiánypótló abban a tekintetben, hogy elsőként vizsgáltuk a magyar lakosság evési motivációit a TEMS kérdőív segítségével. Célkitűzésünk volt a magyar fogyasztók evési motivációinak részletes elemzése. Ennek érdekében egy 1000 fős országos kérdőíves felmérést indítottunk, amely nemre, korra, településtípusra, és régióra tekintettel reprezentatív. A felmérés során 8 jól elkülöníthető faktort kaptunk, amelyek a következők: Szociális szorongás, Kényelmes élvezkedés, Egészségtudatosság és Testsúly-kontroll, Árérzékenység, Társasági evés, Önjutalmazás, Szokás- és hagyomány-vezérelt evés, Az étel csábító jellege. A faktorelemzés alapján a fogyasztókat 5 klaszterbe tudtuk sorolni: Tradicionális egyszerűsítők, Spórolós társasági és érzelmi evők, Kiegyensúlyozott önjutalmazók, Egészségtudatosak, Közömbösek.JEL-kódok: A13, D70, I12, Q56

A közeli évtizedekben világviszonylatban az ún. civilizációs betegségek rohamos terjedése következett be és az általuk okozott halálozások már jó ideje a legnagyobb arányúak. A civilizációs betegségek kezdetben a világ legfejlettebb részén váltak egyre tömegesebbé, míg a fejletlenebb államok mentesek voltak ezektől. Mára a helyzet úgy alakult, hogy a betegséghullám elérte a kevésbé fejlett országokat, míg a világ fejlett államaiban a folyamat lelassult, bizonyos betegségek esetében pedig csökkenő tendenciát mutat. Kutatások kimutatták, hogy a táplálkozás minősége nagymértékben befolyásolja az egészségi állapotot. Napjainkban a növényi alapú táplálkozás növekvő trendnek örvend. E trend elsőszámú mozgatórugója pedig az egyre növekvő mértékű, egészséggel összefüggő aggodalmaknak köszönhető. A növényi alapú étrendekkel kapcsolatos hiedelmek azt mutatják, hogy a fogyasztók erősen hisznek ezen étrendek egészségvédő hatásában, és sok esetben ez az elsődleges étrendválasztási szempont az élvezeti érték helyett. A növényi étrendek fogyasztói emellett sajátos identitással és ideológiai mintázattal is rendelkeznek, melyet a Vegetáriánus Identitás Egységes Modellje hivatott ábrázolni.