Sustainability of Italian families' food practices: Mediterranean diet adherence combined with organic and local food consumption

The present research intends to contribute to the literature on sustainable food consumption by investigating the present-day dietary patterns of Italian households to assess the degree of adherence to the Mediterranean diet together with the level of organic and local food consumption. The analysis is based on data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics survey “Aspects of Daily Life” for the year 2014; this is a Multipurpose Survey conducted in Italy with 44,984 individuals across 18,864 households. A Heckman two-step probit model was implemented to estimate equations to assess the impact of Italian household composition and adherence to the Mediterranean diet upon organic and local food consumption. The study's findings show that both those households with children and those with a higher degree of adherence to the Mediterranean diet have higher probabilities of buying both organic and local products, while increasing household size reduces the likelihood of buying local products. Furthermore, good economic status and a higher level of education increase the probability of consuming organic food. Some of the differences highlighted are of low amplitude; however, these results offer novel and original insights for Italy and support the need to for both policy makers and marketers to implement a wide range of initiatives aimed at educating consumers about, and facilitating access to sustainable food products.