Food and sustainability: An emerging subject in sustainable environmental sciences education applying to the e-learning environment

Abstract

The global food system makes a significant contribution to climate change, affecting greenhouse gas emissions and other major environmental impacts, along the entire food chain. Individual food consumption is an important part of the production-consumption chain, because consumers make the final choice of the goods and services they consume, and their lifestyles determine how they influence sustainability practices. Simultaneously, there is an increasing concern for the environment issues and an increasing demand for naturalistic icons or organic production, free-range farming and unadulterated processing. This work addresses the imperative to address sustainability in food consumer sciences education, due to the multidisciplinary nature of consumer food studies, by applying online education programmes. The rational for e-learning approach is the fact that, advances in information and communication technologies have had a tremendous impact on the format and on the approaches to teaching and learning.