**1. Introduction**

The relationship between health and nutrition has come to the forefront of scientific research due to global health trends and lifestyle changes. According to WHO data, chronic non-communicable diseases (CNDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide [1]. In 2016, they were responsible for 71% (41 million) of the 57 million deaths which occurred globally, and 94% of the number of deaths in Hungary. Major CNDs are cardiovascular diseases (44% of all CND deaths), cancers (22%), chronic respiratory diseases (9%), and diabetes (4%), all of which are strongly connected to dietary factors, among others [2]. Therefore, WHO formed a guideline for healthy diet to prevent chronic diseases worldwide, and national level health prevention programs also emerged [3–5]. Demographic statistics related to ageing shows that life expectancy (LE) and proportion of older adults in the population are increasingly growing both at global and EU level. Between 2000 and 2016, global LE at birth increased by 5.5 years, from 66.5 to 72.0 years [6]. In the EU, almost one fifth of the population (19.7%) was over the age of 65 in 2018, and the relative share of the population is projected to reach 28.5% until 2050 [7]. According to the latest country reports of the European Health & Life Expectancy Information System (EHLEIS) based on 2015 data, Hungarian LE was 18.2 years (21.2 for women and 17.9 for men) at the age 65 [8]. This index, compared to LE at birth, give better estimation to older adults, but do not give information about the quality of those years. The same report presents another indicator: the healthy life years (HLY, also called healthy life expectancy or disability-free life expectancy), which was 5.9 years in Hungary at the age 65, so 68% of elderly years (approximately 12 years) are usually spent with disabilities. LE at birth in Hungary was 75.7 years in 2015, which was nearly 5 years below the EU average, mainly due to higher death rates from cardiovascular diseases and cancer [9]. The same study highlights that only slightly more than half (56%) of Hungarians consider themselves to be in good health, which is one of the lowest rates in the EU. Besides new ways in the investigation of health-related issues [10–12], sustainability of food consumption (including food security) is also becoming an increasingly prominent topic for the scientific community [13–16]. Furthermore, the harmonization of a balanced and sustainable diet opened a new research regime [17].

Nowadays, a rising number of consumers follow a special or consciously composed diet because of health issues or lifestyle decisions, which have opened new opportunities for food business operators. During the last decades, a special focus was given to the health-related functionality of foodstu ffs [18]. Functional foods with high added value have become the fastest growing area of the food industry, although the market share varies greatly from country to country, and there is not one generally accepted definition of functional foods in the industry, so di fferent market data are available due to di fferent interpretations of the category [18,19]. A study reviewed over one hundred di fferent definitions to determine the boundaries of functional food better [20]. One even argued that functional foods might not be handled as a well-definable separate product category [21]. Although the definitions help scientific and professional dialogues, they do not have a particularly significant role from the perspective of consumers. Instead of legal definitions, consumers receive information about the functional properties of food through advertisements and labels. Regarding labels, nutrition and health claims in the EU may appear on products by following the indications of Regulation (EC) No. 1924/2006 [22] and Regulation (EU) 432/2012 [23] based on the scientific advice of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) [24,25].

The increasing importance of the functionality of foodstu ffs was recognized even before the turn of the millennium by the food industry, which has accelerated the development of new products. However, new products had a high failure rate on the market in the 1990s, because most of them were not preceded by a deeper exploration of consumer needs [19,26]. Developing functional food is often a far more complex issue than introducing a new variation of generalized food products, which was realized by researchers and company experts in the 2000s. Many consumer-related studies emerged about functional foods from that time. The first consumer studies related to functional foods tried to explore the e ffect of socio-demographics factors [27–29], attitudinal profiles and motivations [21,30–34], and reactions connected to health and nutrition claims [35–38]. Based on the results of the studies that focused on the concept of functional foods in general, later studies targeted more specific product categories and novel concepts [39–44]. It also means that the focus shifted to market-related surveys and product development aspects.

The relatively few consumer-related articles, which focus on older European consumers, also follow a marketing approach, and they are connected to protein-enriched functional foods majorly [45–47]. In Eastern Europe, a Polish study, based on a nationwide representative consumer survey in 2009, found significant di fferences between age groups in functional food consumption, awareness, and perceived barriers to health improvement. Qualitative consumer studies that support the food product development for older adults have also been published [48,49]. In Hungary, however, a few consumer studies have recently emerged on the relationship between health and food consumption [50–52], and the perspective of older adults on functional foods have not been analyzed yet.

Based on the previous findings, physical and psychological wellbeing of the older population has become a globally significant social challenge. The aim of this study is to give an overall picture about the impact of age on consumer expectations about the functionality of foods, which covers attitude, health-related lifestyle factors, nutrition claims, carriers, health problems, and known diseases as well. It was also an important goal of our study to investigate the most common sustainability markers used on food products.
