With covid increasingly sustainable food choices “Now we need real health education”

In a year, covid has upset paradigms and models of life that we now took for granted. Our sociability has changed, the way we build relationships, work and shop.

On this last aspect the professor Guendalina Graffigna, professor of Consumer and Health Psychology at the Catholic University, has created together with EngageMinds Hub University Research Center, of which she is director, an investigation, focused in particular on food consumption, in which the pandemic looks like a real watershed. “Undoubtedly – he says -, like all crises, even the latter has accentuated behaviors that were already in place, but it seems quite clear that there is a pre and post covid in the eating habits, and not only, of Italians”.

“In the last year we have been pushing more towards local and certified products – he highlights -: it is estimated that 70% of Italians often or always buy Dop, Igp or Stg products, with certified European quality. Over half of the respondents – 52% out of a sample of more than 4 thousand people – moreover, bought zero kilometer food. Basically, there is a growing attention to the origin of food and a greater predisposition to the demand for quality in production processes: the consumer wants to see clearly ”. The password is sustainability “People – explains Graffigna – expect companies to show particular care for the environment, but also for their employees: the latter is a new fact”. In the age of limited travel, winning is, of course, the Made in Italy “This growing predilection for Italian products is explained by two main reasons – notes the teacher -: on the one hand a pandemic that arose in Asia has generated in many people a psychological mechanism of distrust and closure towards the outside world, on the other it is rediscovered and re-evaluate one’s own territory “.

Graffigna and his research team will soon hold a conference that is the result of a wide-ranging investigation on how the virus has impacted the lives of Italians. “Even if the complete data will be available only from the end of March, it can already be said that covid has brought about a profound change in our daily life: from the relationship with health to lifestyles, passing through school to the increasingly frequent use of smart working “. “The lowest common denominator that binds these aspects is a greater sensitivity towards the concept of sustainability: economic, environmental, social – affirms Graffigna -. Until before the pandemic these elements were, so to speak, split, while now awareness is growing of how they are one, linked like the pieces of a domino “.

“To ensure that all this is not wasted – concludes the professor – institutions, decision-makers and communicators must channel this openness, which is absolutely positive, in order to give life to a real education on health and environmental issues, developing a real and its own ‘alphabet of sustainability’ that is not limited to gods claim commercial “.

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