One of the current trends in dietary preferences involves the transition to a low-or reduced-meat diet, which is often desirable for health and environmental reasons. This change in dietary preferences requires an in-depth insight into consumers´ preferences towards a variety of alternative/non-meat proteins. This study aimed to investigate the consumers' preferences and willingness to purchase three alternative dietary protein sources, namely plant-, cultured meat-and insect-based proteins in four countries with dissimilar economic development status (the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil and the Dominican Republic). It also aimed to determine which factors would most influence the willingness to purchase. From a total sample of 729 valid respondents, psychographic variables were analysed. The alternative protein deemed the respondents' most preferred willing to purchase was the plant-based type since that option tended to be more widely available in the market. Among the analysed economic groups, the countries classified in the higher economic groups tended to show more readiness to replace traditional meats for the three alternatives. Models suggest that the respondents regarded the alternative characteristics and/or the attributes compared to meat as being the most important factors that influence their willingness to purchase rather than environmental, convenience or healthy buying decisions, or a low level of neophobia. If the perception of healthiness, safety and nutritiousness increases one-unit for the cultured meat in Brazil, the probability of willingness to purchase would increase 86.82%. One-unit stronger belief in Spanish that plant-based are healthy, safe and nutritious higher the probability of willingness to purchase 68.74%. One-unit higher perceive the characteristics of healthiness, safety and nutritional content of the insectsbased products would increase 68% the probability of willingness to purchase in the United Kingdom, 72% in Brazil and 58% in the Dominican Republic.

No abstract

No abstract

Beer is a beverage that is produced in a multistage process, where some stages of that process are intentionally influenced by microorganisms, while at other stages of the production process microorganisms are actively discouraged. Most of the intentional microbial activity is facilitated by yeast; however bacteria also play an influential role in beer production. This paper will describe the beneficial role of bacteria in the beer production process (the Good), but will also pay due attention to the negative influences bacteria might have on the quality of beer as a commodity (the Bad), and the properties of beer that have given it the status of an inherently safe food for human consumption with regards to disease‐causing bacteria (the Ugly). Copyright © 2013 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling