Knowledge and Consumption Habits Related with White Crowberries (Corema album L.)

Abstract

This study investigated the knowledge and consumption habits related with white crowberries (“camarinhas” in Portuguese) among the Portuguese population. It consisted of a questionnaire survey, undertaken on a sample of 501 participants, higher than 18 years old. For the treatment of data, basic descriptive statistics were used, complemented with the Mann–Whitney U test to assess some associations between categorical variables. Moreover, a tree classification analysis was carried out using a classification and regression tree (CRT) algorithm with cross-validation and a factor analysis was also used to treat the data. The results indicated that the majority of participants know the “camarinha” berry but the level of knowledge decreases from senior adults to young adults. On the other hand, the knowledge and overall perception about their nutritive value, sensorial characteristics and health benefits are low. Regarding the consumption of crowberries, it was found that more than half of the participants did not eat them, and 31.9% ate them only around once a year, mainly fresh, being hand-harvested from the wild by the participants. Furthermore, it was observed that the Portuguese considered that the information about crowberries is scarce, which could justify that only a small part of the participants recognized this plant as vulnerable, due to loss of its habitat, mainly by human actions and owing to lack of information. To fill the gap of information observed in Portuguese people, it is hoped that the project (IDEAS4life) that supports this work could contribute to increase the knowledge about this species and also to alert for the need of preserving this endogenous plant of the Southern European Atlantic coast.

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“…C. album presents sexual dimorphism, and its fruits are berries produced by the female plants and ripen in early summer (June and July) in the south and a little later (August and September) in the north [ 8 ]. C. album fruits have been used as food or food ingredient for many centuries, fresh as appetizers and juices and can also be used to make jams [ 9 ]. In addition, these fruits have been employed in traditional medicine to treat fever and intestinal pinworm infection [ 7 , 8 , 10 ].…”