Abstract:

Between sustainable food consumption as an attitude and a real behavior trend there is great difference (Vermeir and Verbeke, 2006; Grunert, 2011, Yamoah and Acquaye, 2019). Even if people understand the importance of consuming food and drinks that come from sustainable sources or are produced in a sustainable way and limit their consumption of food and drinks, there are several factors that contribute to the real possibility of applying that understanding, such as income or food availability (Swaminathan and Bhavani, 2013). In this case the food consumption trends, from a statistical perspective, offer primary information related to the willingness of changing the dietary pattern of people. The current paper presents the last years consumption trends of selected main food categories and compares them to the scientific recommendations related to food consumption, in order to create a summarizing picture of the sustainable food consumption existence. For the analysis secondary data from Eurostat and The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) were used. Some conclusions regarding the existence of changes in the dietary patterns of humans, as they can be extracted from the international data will be drawn. The main result of the study suggests that there are important differences between the diets of the developed populations and the developing ones, a fact that contributes to continuing the current unsustainable pattern of food consumption, by feeding the need of the developing to reach the developed lifestyles.