Food policy – a consumption perspective
ENP 23806_Sustainability Transitions
Lecture 5: Food Policy
Dr Sigrid Wertheim-Heck,
Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University
What’s for dinner?
Content
Food Policy
Food Policy &
Food Policy
Sociology &
Consumption
in practice
Food Policy
Case Study
3
Objectives of this lecture
To know how and why approaches in food policy are changing
To understand why and how consumption matters in food policy
To become aware of important social challenges in food policy
To understand and to evaluate how social theory can be applied
to inform food policy
Food Policy
Sustainability Transition: Food Policy
34% man-made
greenhouse
gas from food
systems
Almost 2
billion
people are
overweight
821 million
people are
hungry
What is Food Policy?
7
Food Policy Word Cloud
Go to: Mentimeter.com
Code: xxx
8
The Wikipedia definition of food policy
▪
Food policy is the area of public policy concerning how food is
produced, processed, distributed, purchased, or provided. Food
policies are designed to influence the operation of the food and
agriculture system balanced with ensuring human health needs.
9
Changing Food policy approaches
▪
Food Value Chains > Food systems
▪
Private sector > Public policy
▪
Globalisation > Localisation
▪
Production > Consumption
Food value chain - Food System
(Ingram, 2011)
11
Private Sector – Public Policy
Globalisation - Localisation
▪
Health
▪
Evironment
▪
Resilience
▪
Trust
Production - Consumption
PROBLEMATIC:
Technological evolution
Population growth
▪
▪
Food production
Food consumption
Source: https://European-seed.com
>> More with less and better
>> Less and better for all
Environmental,
dietary health and
social costs
Food Policy and sustainability transitions
Now you should be able to:
… describe changes in food policy in relation to sustainability
transitions
So what about consumption?
Food Policy and Consumption
Why consumption matters in Food Policy
17
The ‘consumerist turn’ in Food Policy
▪
Consumers and consumption dynamics (co)define what happens with the
greening of food systems:
▪
Consumers are lead actors in food-matters that are under their own
control (where to shop, what to buy, which restaurant to pick, what to eat,
etc.)
▪
Consumers co-decide about matters that are decided upon higher-up in
food chains (using pesticides; developing new products, etc.)
Citizen-Consumers in Greening Food Systems
Ecological
Citizenship
Political
Consumerism
Life(style)
Politics
Source: Spaargaren and Oosterveer (2010) Citizen-Consumers as Agents of Change in Globalizing Modernity: The
Case of Sustainable Consumption. Sustainability: DOI: 10.3390/su2071887
Dominance of individualist approaches
Policies for greening food consumption view consumers as:
▪
▪
▪
Rational agents
Open to information at any time
Using info to translating green intentions into
green action: Attitude–Behaviour–Choice models
Steering consumption?
Intention – Action Gap
Nudging consumption in the Food Environment
Limits to nudging in greening food consumption
▪
Nudge = influencing choices within routinised behaviour:
It is a choice architecture to retain consumer sovereignty (the right to choose),
but nudging consumers to make certain choices.
▪
Nudge ⌿ changing routinised behaviour
What’s for dinner?
Food Policy and Consumption
Now you should be able to:
… describe changes in food policy in relation to sustainability transitions
… understand why and how consumption matters in food policy
So how does this work in practice?
BREAK – 10 min
Food Policy and Consumption
Now you should be able to:
… describe changes in food policy in relation to sustainability transitions
… understand why and how consumption matters in food policy
So how does this work in practice?
Food Policy in Practice
Contextualised understandings
Case: Food Policy steering consumption?
Hanoi, Vietnam
32
Urban modernization and food safety concerns
Food retail environment in Vietnam
Policy expectation
Attitude–Behaviour–Choice
Theory of Reasoned Action
IF consumers are concerned about food safety
THAN they will shift to supermarket shopping
BECAUSE OF their private food safety and hygiene standards
Food Policy: Retail Modernization
2012
2020
Reduction of traditional markets
Research questions
▪
How do the urban poor, within the
organization of their daily lives, cope with
progressing food retail transformations?
▪
How and to what extent does this impact their
daily dietary intake in terms of nutrition,
diversity and food safety?
37
QUESTION 1 - open question
What percentage of Hanoi citizens has a low-income?
Low-income urbanites in Hanoi
Focus on low-income urbanites:
•
2050: 70% world population is urban
•
50% urban world population in Asia
•
Many urbanites will be poor
•
Hanoi, Vietnam, is case in point
•
≤ 5 USD / cap / day:
39
Studying food consumption practices
Going beyond food environment and diet causation
Studying social practices
Social Practices of food
consumption
Food shopping
The transformative food
retail environment
Food
preparation and
eating at home
Urbanites and their
changing lifestyles
Methods: food environment
Food
Consumption
Practices
Dietary
Intake
Food
Environment
Lifestyles
Stratified sampling
STRATUM 1
STRATUM 2
STRATUM 3
STRATUM 4
Methods: food practices
Food
Consumption
Practices
Dietary
Intake
Food
Environment
Lifestyles
Lifestyles
Resilience of informal street markets
Creative agency
▪
Self-organization
“People start selling in their house or rent other’s ground floor, to evade selling on the
streets.”
“I am a teacher, and I have some colleagues with relatives in the countryside. Once a
week, the relatives send vegetables to the school to be sold to all of us.”
47
Creative agency
▪
Self-organization
▪
Online
“At my academy there is an online market, so called ‘countryside market of the Academy’,
Many teachers sell their homemade foods there.”
“I buy online, via Facebook. I joined a community of farmers.”
“I buy fish mostly from people on the internet. They are from the coastal, fishing areas.”
48
Impact on diets
19% food consumed
84% ultra-processed food consumed
•
Wertheim-Heck, S., Raneri, J. and Oosterveer P. (2019) Food safety and nutrition for low-income urbanites:
exploring a social justice dilemma in consumption policy. Environment and Urbanization. 31(2): 397–420.
Food policy challenges
Unintended consequences
Conflicting duality
POLICY
Stimulating
less healthy
diets
POLICY
NUTRITION
FOOD SAFETY
Depriving
access
nutritious
foods
50
Though not measured: consumption patterns are shifting
Diet high in processed meat*
Diet high in sugar sweetened beverages*
36.2% of children (5-12 years old) is severely
overweight or obese in inner-city Hanoi, Vietnam**
* https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare
** Pham et al. (2019) Prevalence and associated factors of overweight and obesity among schoolchildren in
Hanoi. BMC Publ. Health 19: 1478.
Results: Shifting diets
▪
Decision making shifting towards children preferences
I was young,
we had
nothingretail
to eat.influencing
I tell the children
that theypreferences
nowadays live
▪ “When
Unhealthy
choices
beyond
children’s
▪
happier than I was during the subsidy period.”
Non-communicable disease consequences
“The ‘70–80’s period was very miserable … Life is much better now.”
“I have to change the food so the children can eat it.”
“Our family menu is tailored to the children.”
“My kids will not eat what they don’t like. If they don’t eat their health and development is
not guaranteed.”
52
Results: Shifting diets
▪
Decision making towards children preferences
▪
Unhealthy choices influence children’s preferences
▪
“My
children love KFC fried
chicken.consequences
I don’t let them eat at KFC but fry it for them at
Non-communicable
disease
home, with potato chips also.”
“My kids love pizza, and on promotion day I also buy pizza.”
“I know it is not good, but my oldest son drinks Coke, Red Bull and Sprite.”
“We always have cakes, sweets and cookies for the kids.”
“I restrict soft drinks, but serve homemade lemonade from water, lemon and sugar.”
53
Results: Shifting diets
▪
Decision making shifting towards children’ preferences
▪
Unhealthy choices beyond retail influencing children’s preferences
▪
Non-communicable disease consequences
“My grandson weighs 40kg but just 8 years old.”
“My 6 year old son weighs nearly 40kg, so he should be on a diet. But he eats a super big
bowl of rice and donuts, cookies, sweets…It is called obesity.”
54
Shifting diets beyond food retail environment
Decision making shifting towards children preferences
“I have to change the food so the children can eat it.”
“Our family menu is tailored to the children.”
“My kids will not eat what they don’t like. If they don’t eat their health and development is not
guaranteed.”
Unhealthy choices beyond retail influencing children’s preferences
“My children love KFC fried chicken. I don’t let them eat at KFC but fry it for them at home, with
potato chips also.”
“My kids love pizza, and on promotion day I also buy pizza.”
“I know it is not good, but my oldest son drinks Coke, Red Bull and Sprite.”
“We always have cakes, sweets and cookies for the kids.”
“I restrict soft drinks, but serve homemade lemonade from water, lemon and sugar.”
Non-communicable disease consequences
“My grandson weighs 40kg but just 8 years old.”
“My 6 year old son weighs nearly 40kg, so he should be on a diet. But he eats a super big bowl of
rice and donuts, cookies, sweets…It is called obesity.”
Important outcomes
▪
▪
▪
▪
Food environment transformations do not necessarily lead to changes in
food practices
Consumers accommodate themselves in creative ways
Food environment transformations might lead to unintended
consequences, excluding groups in the population and/or jeopardizing
healthy diets
Understanding the versatility in consumption practices may inform novel
pathways towards sustainable and healthy food systems
Food Policy in Practice
Now you should be able to:
… describe changes in food policy in relation to sustainability transitions
… understand why and how consumption matters in food policy
… be able to explain how policy may sort unintended
consequences when consumption is not carefully assessed.
So how can sociology inform policy?
Sociology and Food Policy
Policy and practices
Questioning: the ability of policy to steer consumption into aimed for directions
59
How to move beyond the Nudge approach?
NUDGING =
BEYOND NUDGING =
▪
▪
▪
▪
Providers Changing Choice
Configurations
Along (consumer-) accepted lines
Without consulting consumers;
provision driven
▪
▪
Consumers as co-constructors of
(choice) configurations
Bottom-up and Top-down
Shared responsibilities and powers
between consumers and providers
RECOGNITION OF THE ROLE OF
CHANGING ROUTINES, CONTEXTS MORE
‘ROUTINES’ AND ‘CONTEXTS’
THAN CHOICE CONFIGURATIONS
60
Social Practice Theory/Theories
No theory does everything
▪
Social Practice Theory is a theory of how social beings, with their diverse
lifestyles, motives and intentions, make and transform the world which
they live in; a dialectic between social structure and human agency
working back and forth in a dynamic relationship. Giving primacy to
neither agency nor structure.
61
Consumption co-shaping the food environment
Lived experience research
Lived experiences – research methods
Food Policy implications
Citizen co-creation:
▪
▪
Problem articulation
Solution development
65
Lived experience evidence and Food Policy
Food Policy is a shared responsibility
Sociology and Food Policy
Now you should be able to:
… describe changes in food policy in relation to sustainability
transitions
… understand why and how consumption matters in food policy
… be able to explain how policy may sort unintended
consequences when consumption is not carefully assessed.
… understand in what way consumption sociology can
inform more effective policy development
Thank you for
your attention!
For more information:
Watch the project documentary:
Sigrid.wertheim-heck@wur.nl