Increasing adhesion and/or adherence to sustainable eating patterns

Making consumers' food habits more sustainable is a key element for reducing the environmental impact of food (and food waste) and for people's health. Therefore, any strategy for promoting sustainable diets among people cannot ignore an analysis of the social context of consumer rights and gender equality and the reduction of child labour in food systems.

Work Package 1.3, focused on promoting sustainable food habits, will have a user-centred approach: researchers will adopt direct stakeholder engagement methodologies, such as citizen juries and hybrid forums, to fuel discussion and design solutions in a participatory way. These approaches can provide a guiding methodology for multi-actor research fieldwork to collect data and a dynamic mechanism for better communication. 

One of the themes that the work package on food habits will emphasise is economic support for food consumption. Healthy food consumption can be incentivised through economic policies that support citizens, especially the poorest ones, who adopt healthy and sustainable food models. As many studies show, taxes and subsidies on foods and nutrients have the potential to promote healthier diets and reduce mortality.

Food, as we know, is also a social matter that embraces cultural and symbolic dimensions. Food represents a component of people's identity, and therefore, individuals often need to be more willing to introduce scientifically and technologically designed foods into their diets.

Nevertheless, it is challenging to imagine achieving progress towards a more sustainable, secure, and safe food chain without embracing new food technologies. That is why the research groups focus on understanding consumer perceptions of novel food technologies such as genetic technology (GT), nanotechnology, cultured meat, and food irradiation related to food production, preparation, and storage.