The development of macronutrient consumption and the impact of macroeconomics indicators on their consumption in years 2004-2011 in the Slovak republic

Nutrition security is related to food security and in a recent few years has become an important part of everyday life. According to FAO (2009), food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life." As Frankenberg, T. R. et. al (1997) claim, nutrition security exists when the person has a nutritionally adequate diet and the food consumed is biologically utilized." Nutrition requirements are different and mostly depend on society and household income. Meanwhile, a large number of empirical studies have been devoted to analyze consumer demand for food and demand for food diversity. It is believed that income is a relevant variable of consumer choice that explains the differences in consumption behaviour. In general, people with lower income have tendency to consume more fatty food and their nutrition is not diversified enough. Therefore, in this paper we will focus on consumption of macronutrients - proteins, carbohydrates and lipids in the Slovak republic. The attention will be paid to nutrition intakes of Slovak population and their evaluation from the point of food and nutrition security. Using data from Household budget survey from Slovak statistical office for years 2011 - 2014, we construct econometric model to analyse, which factors affect consumption of macronutrients. The regression analysis with dependent variables (income; family size; education, type of municipality and amount of children) is applied to analyse individual nutrition behaviour. Our analysis is not take into account age of individual household members. According to survey of Di Giuseppe, S. (2011), macroeconomic development also affects purchasing power and consumption. Due to this assertion we extend our analysis to macroeconomic indicators, such as GDP per capita and unemployment rate in selecte regions. Slovakia is divided into 8 regions (region of Bratislava; Trnava; Trencin; Zilina; Nitra; Banska Bystrica; Presov; Kosice). We assume that the existing differences between them, e. g. in transport infrastructure, education, GDP, incomes, employment, etc., affect consumer behaviour. Finally, the Berry index is used to evaluate food diversity in selected regions during the observed period. We tried to prove that there are differences in food diversity between lower income households and higher income households. Moreover, it is assumed that lower income households do not have diversified diet, resp. their diet is not sufficiently diversified. Our results are shown in tables and figures in this paper. To summarize, in our paper is analysed the development of macronutrient consumption of Slovak population, as well as identified the factors having impact on demand for macronutrients.