Awareness and behavioral change as an engine in making food consumption smarter.
For an everyday consumer, even for the most sophisticated one, the idea of a global food system is a relatively abstract and complex phenomenon. More and more people are beginning to be aware of the implications of food production and aspects of sustainability. However, it is difficult to identify the most sustainable food as there are so many dimensions products can be measured on.
Maybe it’s important for you that the pig you are eating has led a comfortable life. However, a nice, solid, and flat floor in the pigsty makes it more difficult for the farmer to quickly remove manure and, therefore, increases greenhouse gas impact compared to other stall forms.
Maybe, you want to decrease your climate impact by not drinking regular milk and therefore change to the popular almond milk. But by increasing demand for almonds, you put further pressure on water consumption in California, USA, which may hit poor farmers with more sustainable products the hardest.
Or another example: you might have heard that from an environmental viewpoint, it’s better to buy non-organic strawberries as these have a higher yield, and therefore are more effectively produced when measured in CO2-emissions; however, non-organic strawberries are also one of the major sources of pesticides being released to the environment and ultimately accumulating in our bodies.
And what about poultry farming? You may want to change the formulation of the feed you are feeding the birds and thus affect CO2 emissions of the entire integration, but will it necessarily have a positive effect on the health-related issues, or the ability to reach the optimal weight within the given time?
It’s a complex world.
Food, of course, is something your body needs and is ultimately related to your health. Non-communicable diseases kill 41 million people each year, equivalent to 71% of all deaths globally. 18 million of these deaths are due to cardiovascular diseases many of which have a clear connection to what we eat. In addition, it is now clear that we are not just feeding ourselves. An exciting new research field explores how our eating influences special gut microbiota, which in turn influences our immune systems.
Luckily, even though food choices are difficult, there are still simple, straightforward, and general guidelines. For many people in developed countries, these guidelines include the consumption of less meat. Feeding livestock with good food is an ineffective use of our sources, at least in the way it is done today. Farmers have partial information, usually processed after the fact and this creates very little room for improvement.
Reducing or eliminating meat from your diet causes less environmental damage in terms of water use, pollution, deforestation, and climate change and if you make sure to get important protein and vitamins from other sources, then it’s also better for your health.
For the majority of the population, changing eating habits is, however, not easy. Therefore, in order to start eating smarter, we have to crack the nut of behavioral change. Ultimately, it is all about future consumers. Who are the future consumers? Who are they as human beings? What are their believes and disbelieves? What will affect their decision-making processes? What will they be willing to give up and what to adopt instead?
In order to create a greener climate, we, as consumers, need to make more climate-friendly food, and how does one make food climate-friendly? It is important to know how to do this. In a fast-paced world, we need to have products that are easier to decode i.e. they should resemble the products we usually buy. We shouldn’t doubt what these commodities should be used for. If we produced a series of products that looked different and had another name than what we are used to, no one would ever buy them, and consequently, we would never create a greener world.
For many, eating less meat is difficult; however, considerable innovation is occurring, which is designed to make it easier to eat less meat.
Artificial meat that is to say meat produced from the culture of animal cells is attracting a lot of funding for research and promises to revolutionize the price of meat. Presently, however, this process is extremely energy-consuming; therefore, it is unclear how important such products will be in transitioning to sustainable food systems.
Meat alternatives based on plant material are already on supermarket shelves in many countries. Here you can find quite a few hamburger brands that are produced with deep technologies and this motivates the masses since indeed the phenomenon itself is exciting. Other developments that can be found are non-animal egg products. The egg industry is huge and is reflected in baking, retail products, and hospitality.
Meat alternatives based on plants are easy for the consumer to accept, but they lack nutritional quality compared to actual meat.
The opposite is true of another protein source, namely insects.
Yes, so the first question you can ask yourself is why do we need to eat insects? and there are many good reasons for that.
It is estimated that up to about 2 billion people around the world eat insects to a greater or lesser extent already, which means if we look at different cultures and count the population, then up to 2 billion people have insects as not necessarily part of their daily diet but as part of the repertoire of food products, they would want to eat.
However, there is a great interest in cultivating the use of insects as a source of food around the world, because they are high on protein; it is a composition of fatty acids that can be found in many insects. And there are various vitamins that are otherwise hard to obtain from only a vegetarian diet, and that can be obtained in ample amounts from only eating a carnivore diet in which insects are a good example.
In recent years, there have been many environmental reasoning as to why we should eat insects because insects have an incredibly efficient nutrient turnover compared to i.e. cows and pigs. Insects are also more efficient when it comes to turning feed into weight. This means that we need less space and resources in producing the same amount of energy into food and that’s a good thing. When compared to animal food production, then we usually need a lot of space and resources.
The case for insects as a food source is clear, but conceptions of insects as a potential food source vary greatly around the world. The likeliness of eating insects is greater closer to the Equator on a worldwide basis. More insects live in the wild and for that reason, it is easier to just eat insects when foraging, when gathering food or while hunting.
In many cultures, insects have often functioned as snacks to eat while on these sorts of outings. It is also a very seasonal food product in some places such as Uganda. When the season comes for winged termites comes on the market, everyone will want their hands on them during that period as winged termites are a fine delicacy. In that way, it is a very seasonal food product. Although some of the societal benefits of eating insects seem clear, the challenge when it comes to eating smarter is always the question of behavior.
To sum up I just want to say that the transition to smart food consumption should also be done wisely. We are not talking about a “trend”, we are talking about a necessity that will shape our reality in the coming decades.
As a person who for many years has dealt with behavioral change through advertising, I must say that there is a gap between consumer’s statements and actual behavior. Therefore, action must be taken on many explanatory levels in order for the behavioral change to happen and the demand for smart food consumption to be sustainable.
