They’re “going hungry” even though they eat their fill every day. Around the world, 2.5 billion people are affected by so-called hidden hunger – and not just in developing countries. This hunger usually goes unnoticed because those affected do not suffer from a feeling of hunger. If income is insufficient for a balanced and varied diet, essential micronutrients can be missing from the daily diet. Even in industrialized countries, hidden hunger is especially prevalent where poverty prevails – among unemployed single mothers and their children or impoverished senior citizens. The public are clearly not sufficiently concerned about the issue.

Public communication of chronic lifestyle risks is generally non-transparent and potentially misleading. A reasonable idea to communicate easily comprehensible the consequences of healthy and unhealthy behavior for health is to express daily effects of lifestyle factors as changes in the speed with which one ages and thus one’s length of life.

Sustainability has become fundamental to many global policy agendas in areas relating to human impact on the earth’s resources, such as with food production and consumption. Issues relating to environmental dimension of sustainable food production and consumption include consumer behaviors, food labeling and food security as well as land use, waste and climate change. Research conducted in these areas has shown that consumers could face dramatically reduced food choices in the future unless much more is done to lower the environmental impact of current food consumption patterns.