# Knowledge and Consumption Habits Related with White Crowberries (_Corema album_ L.)
## 4 Discussion  
The majority of participants know the berry \"camarinha\", but the level of knowledge depends on age, decreasing from senior adults to young adults. Indeed, the old adults could have memories of selling berries in traditional commerce and streets near the beach. On the other hand, the majority of young people also know the berries, but their knowledge could be, mainly, obtained from the internet, or journals and magazines that were considered the most appropriate media to disseminate the information about crowberries. Indeed, since 2018, the project IDEAS4 life that supports this work developed efforts at various levels towards wide dissemination of the information to the scientific community and the general public through media press releases, paper/digital journals, and participation in local and national radio programs and workshops. Other factors that contribute to the \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c} \hline \hline \multicolumn{1}{c}{\multirow{2}{*}{**Variable**}} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Factor Loadings**} \\ \cline{2-3}  & **F1** & **F2** \\ \hline V1. Cleaning of forests & 0.442 & \\ V2. Destruction of dunes & 0.639 & \\ V3. Forest fires & 0.469 & \\ V4. Susceptibility to invading species & 0.563 & \\ V5. Urbanization of coastal areas & 0.776 & \\ V6. Lifestyle change & 0.575 & \\ V7. Lack of knowledge about their potential & 0.620 & \\ V8. Reduced scientific research about this species & 0.842 \\ V9. Reduced dissemination through media & 0.772 & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Factor analysis to the possible causes that can contribute to the endangerment of the crowberry species. higher knowledge were the high level of education, the marital status (living together), employment (people employed) and sex (female). On the other hand, the type of profession does not influence the level of knowledge, even in areas related to food, nutrition, and agriculture. This can be due to the decrease of their production, harvesting, and the inexistence of locals to buy these berries. Probably, the knowledge about the berries, especially among adults and senior adults, had been related to childhood memories that were fallen by the wayside and that have been revived by the dissemination of information about the crowberries. Globally, the participants are well informed about the berry plant and berry appearance (color and size), but only about one third know or remember that the berry has seeds (usually three seeds, with a proportion of 54.97% (dry basis) of weight) [9]. This can be related to the very scarce consumption in Portugal that results from the current inexistence of markets that sell these berries. This aspect can also be related to the lack of knowledge of participants about the nutritional characteristics of these berries, such as their content in sugar and dietary fiber. Moreover, nearly half of the participants do not know or do not remember what is the taste, aroma and texture of crowberries. About two thirds of the participants referred that they already consumed crowberries, which implies that they, at least once, were introduced to this small fruit. However, the frequency of consumption is very low, with about half of participants referring that they do not eat crowberries, and nearly the other half eat them only once per year, probably during a trip to the beach or to the coast, when they could find them on sale on the street, more than 30 years ago. In fact, only a very low proportion of people admit they consume them more than one time per year, in which case, they collected the berries themselves from the wild, thus not requiring commercialization. Trade of these berries is actually very scarce, either due to low abundance of the fruits or to low interest in harvesting or buying them. The way of consumption was mainly fresh but, in some cases, they were consumed in jelly, liquor, dessert, as a refreshment, frozen fruit, garnish of a dish, ice cream or beer.