Cutting through conflicting prescriptions: How guidelines inform " healthy and sustainable " diets in Switzerland (original) (raw)
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Sustainability
With the growing recognition of the food system for a transformation toward sustainability, there is a need for future guidance on food consumption and policy. In particular, dietary guidelines (DGs) have received increasing attention as potential tools for enabling transformative change. This paper analyzes how and to what extent different state and non-state actors in Switzerland incorporate sustainability aspects in their dietary guidelines. It examines how these DGs account for different dimensions at the basis of sustainability thinking, including the classic environmental, economic, and social dimensions as well as issues of health and governance. Our analysis shows the explicit inclusion of sustainability aspects in all DGs of the chosen actors in Switzerland, addressing at least one sustainability category predominantly. Through the analysis of the different stakeholders, different areas of focus become apparent, with each stakeholder covering specific niches of sustainabili...
Frontiers in sustainable food systems, 2022
Food consumption is among the activities with the most significant environmental impacts, and furthermore contributes to rising health costs. We explored the factors that foster or hinder healthy and sustainable eating in Switzerland. Based on an online household survey with 620 respondents, we first determined the disability adjusted life years and greenhouse gas impacts associated with individuals' dietary habits to measure healthy and environmentally sustainable eating. We then relate the nutritional health and environmental impacts to individual's intentions, and explore what interpersonal and societal factors foster or hinder healthy and sustainable eating. Results suggest that intentions for healthy eating are stronger than intentions to eat environmentally sustainable and that intentions for healthy eating transmit better into behavior than intentions for environmentally sustainable eating. Males and females had similar intentions but males showed substantially higher dietary related health impacts with 12 min of healthy life lost per day and 14% higher carbon footprint than females. Furthermore, vegan and vegetarian diets yielded very high nutritional health benefits of >23 min of healthy life gained per person and day, mostly realized through the reduced intake in processed and red meat and increased consumption of nuts, wholegrain, and to a lesser extent in fruits and vegetables. Meatless diets show concurrent high reductions in the carbon footprint of −42% for vegetarians and −67% for vegan. A key obstacle to healthier and more environmentally sustainable eating is that people do not recognize the high nutritional and environmental co benefits of vegetarian and vegan diets. This suggests that policies promoting healthy eating can target factors affecting intentions, while measures targeting environmentally sustainable eating should aim at overcoming the intention behavior gap, by informing on e.g. the importance of reducing meat consumption toward environmental sustainability.
The Sustainable Diet Question: Reasserting societal dynamics into the debate about a Good Diet
International Journal of the Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 2021
This paper locates the notion of Sustainable Diet as the latest iteration in the long-term policy question: What is a ‘Good Diet’? It reviews why there is tension over broadening the notion of a Good Diet to include the environment. It contrasts simple and complex approaches to sustainability for food systems and diet in particular. It proposes a multi-criteria approach to dietary analysis and to policy guidelines. The experience of a number of countries are summarised and analysed for sources of resistance and difficulty. It proposes that the socio-cultural dimension of Sustainable Diet requires further analysis but already offers promising avenues for change.
Towards Win–Win Policies for Healthy and Sustainable Diets in Switzerland
Nutrients, 2020
The first Swiss national dietary survey (MenuCH) was used to screen disease burdens and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of Swiss diets (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, slimming), with a focus on gender and education level. The Health Nutritional Index (HENI), a novel disease burden-based nutritional index built on the Global Burden of Disease studies, was used to indicate healthiness using comparable, relative disease burden scores. Low whole grain consumption and high processed meat consumption are priority risk factors. Non-processed red meat and dairy make a nearly negligible contribution to disease burden scores, yet are key drivers of diet-related GHGs. Swiss diets, including vegetarian, ranged between 1.1–2.6 tons of CO2e/person/year, above the Swiss federal recommendation 0.6 ton CO2e/person/year for all consumption categories. This suggests that only changing food consumption practices will not suffice towards achieving carbon reduction targets: Systemic changes to food provi...
Processes of food production and consumption have the single largest environmental impact of all human activities. The fact that diets have to change into a more sustainable direction is generally agreed upon. However, a shared vision of a sustainable and desirable society to support these changes, is missing. This thesis contributes to the question why we disagree about food sustainability and what different pathways policy makers will need to develop simultaneously to facilitate more sustainable food choices. This thesis consists of five independent research papers that address this issue from different angles. As a result, the chapters are connected but they also follow their own internal logic. Firstly, the investigation was geared towards identifying cultural currents in Dutch society that incorporate promising elements to question the dominant food cultural paradigm and to facilitate transitional changes. The dominant paradigm can be considered problematic, particularly because it stimulates routinized mass meat consumption, which has detrimental effects on the environment and society, human health and animal welfare. Two in-depth, qualitative studies (chapter two and three) were carried out to understand what deeper motivational drivers could be identified among groups that currently show an increased involvement with food. It revealed that both groups were striving to incorporate a deeper level of meaning in their food choices. One focuses on the personal values of nature connectedness, awareness and purity and the other seeks meaning in food competences, taste and social relatedness. These themes reflect the contrast between purity and ethics versus pleasure and aesthetics. It was shown that the motivations of both groups can be interpreted and understood within larger analytic frameworks of culture and cultural change in the West. Therefore it is argued that policy efforts to motivate more sustainable food consumption among a larger group of consumers may benefit from connecting to these underlying cultural trends, for example by means of framing and stimulating associated practices. While theories of cultural change can indicate the nature, direction and dynamics of societal change, it concerns potentially slow and long-term developments. Therefore, policy makers need to address value pluralism and develop varying feasible pathways to stimulate a more sustainable diet. So secondly, three quantitative survey studies were carried out to investigate different types of food-related motivations, incorporating the qualitative findings mentioned above. Self-determination theory was employed to further develop the idea of meaningful food consumption. Thus, a philosophical and social-psychological perspective were combined in order to draw distinguishing parallels between the cultural and the individual level. Varying value orientations were tested in a representative survey in combination with the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which gave rise to different motivational themes reflecting cultural tensions in Western society. These were the degree to which the food-nature relationship was internalized, intrinsic enjoyment of food, extrinsic orientation towards food and ambivalence towards food. These themes were all significant with regards to sustainability relevant topics: the quantities of meat that people indicated to consume, the choice for organic or free range meat or plant-based snacks and the prevalence of a high body mass index. The study also addresses practices related to meat, meat substitution and meat reduction among Dutch consumers. The practices reflected a cultural gradient of meat substitution options running from other products of animal origin and conventional meat free meals to real vegetarian meals. The results demonstrated that patterns of meat consumption, substitution and reduction are influenced by preferences for meal formats (conventional three component meals versus combined meals), protein literacy, cooking skills, preferences for plant-based foods and motivational orientations towards food. In particular, a lack of familiarity and skill hampered the preparation of real vegetarian meals. Based on the findings a diversified understanding of meat substitution is proposed and four policy-relevant pathways for a transition towards a more plant-based diet are specified, including an incremental change towards more health-conscious vegetarian meals, a pathway that utilizes the trend towards convenience, a pathway of reduced portion size, and practice-oriented change towards vegetarian meals. The thesis contributes to a better understanding what a culture of food sustainability may entail and it sheds light on the cultural influence on individual food choices. It illustrates how these insights might be utilized by policy makers in government and industry whose goal it is to facilitate more sustainable food choices.
Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation
In recent years there have been increasing calls for “global dietary transition” in order to save the planet and improve human health. One troubling development associated with this is the attempt to delineate in universal terms what constitutes a sustainable and healthy diet. This perspective takes issue with this development, and specifically refutes one increasingly popular dietary narrative which calls for people to avoid red meat and dairy, and which portrays the local food movement as a romantic distraction. In contrast, the paper provides evidence of a range of sustainability and health benefits associated with both local food systems and the agri-food system’s inclusion of ruminants (the suborder of mammals from which humans mostly derive red meat and dairy). Finally, the perspective calls for a pluralist and multi-scalar approach to the multifaceted challenges associated with food production.
Promoting ‘pro’, ‘low’, and ‘no’ meat consumption in Switzerland: The role of emotions in practices
Appetite, 2020
Meat consumption has become a contentious issue among the Swiss population. The emotional character of the debates surrounding the necessity for a change of habits, namely a reduction in consumption and a shift in the kind of meat we eat, reveals its particular place in our societies: as a symbolic food with roots in our affective economies, as involved in the creation of a shared culture and national identity, and as a political object used to defend different views. To date, research in sustainable consumption has given much attention to environmental- and animal-friendly groups and their practices. However, certain interest groups have been voicing the right to meat, or promoting alternative forms of meat consumption. In this paper, we seek to understand the affective dimension of ‘no’, ‘low’ and ‘pro’ meat consumption initiatives in the Swiss context. Based on a qualitative study and an understanding of emotions as part of social practices, we draw out what affects and related m...
2020
In recent years, there have been increasing calls for “global dietary transition” in order to save the planet and improve human health. One troubling development associated with this is the attempt to delineate in universal terms what constitutes a sustainable and healthy diet. In this article, I problematize an increasingly popular dietary narrative—one which calls for people to avoid red meat and dairy, and which portrays the local food movement as a romantic distraction. In contrast, I provide evidence for a range of sustainability and health benefits associated with localism and the inclusion of ruminants—the suborder of mammals from which humans derive most of their red meat and dairy—in the food system. Finally, using the neo-colonial subjugation of Indigenous food cultures as an example, I show how universal dietary advice can result in the promotion of culturally-inappropriate foods to the detriment of community health and sustainability. I conclude with a call for a more pl...
The healthfulness of the populations' diets has long been a concern in Scotland. However, despite policies aimed at improving the healthfulness of people's diet, it remains poor. The failure of these policies to bring about desired changes is partly because the relationship between dietary advice, understandings of it and the healthfulness of food practices is complex. The Scottish Government funded a phenomenological study of thirty-one adults to understand the populations' food practices and, drawing on interviews and food diaries, this paper reports emergent findings that illustrate how some participants construct and maintain food practices they perceive to be healthful and appear to show consistency with dietary guidelines whilst others struggle. Research data were thematically analyzed and interviews revealed participants' reported food rules that appeared to show consistencies with nutritional guidelines. Interviews and food diaries also revealed that participants broke their food rules which resulted in less healthful eating patterns. The results suggest that those participants who routinize rules for breaking food rules achieved eating patterns that they perceived to be healthier than those who did not.
Addressing the Sustainability Paradox: The Analysis of "Good Food" in Everyday Life
Sustainability, 2020
This paper investigates food consumption in terms of socio-spatial practices as complex patterns of meanings, competencies and materialities that shape daily life. The praxeological approach that we advise might improve food sustainability policies by tackling the current sustainability paradox: persisting unsustainable food consumption despite significant media coverage of food sustainability issues and considerable political attention to this matter. Acknowledging the importance of both individual action and collective conditions in shaping food routines, we argue that the sustainability paradox might be overcome through integrating the analysis of social structures and individual behavior, and consequently addressing the determinants of sustainability in daily life. To this end, we analyze narrative interviews on "good food" regarding cultural meanings, individual competencies, and diverse materialities that govern food consumption, identify common themes and discuss their relevance for food policy. We show that food is part of complex orderings of socio-spatial practices, including embodied knowledge, patterns of commensality and constraints of orchestrating daily life, which cannot be addressed appropriately by targeting individual consumption behavior only.