Food wellbeing and suffering index for sustainable food consumption
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
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Author
Date
2022
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Master's Programme in Creative Sustainability
Language
en
Pages
75
Series
Abstract
The current food system is contributing to the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and connects with unsustainable water, land, and resource use. The 1.5-degree Lifestyles strategy in Finland includes targets for a more sustainable food industry. The needed change is drastic and requires widespread dietary change and reduction of animal-based products. Food sustainability communication tools have been often used to facilitate dietary change by rising consumer awareness. However, these tools often face shortcomings due to the dietary resistance, attitude-behaviour gap, as well as tool development without considering the context and practicalities of its use. First, the thesis investigates what complementary strategies could support food sustainability communication tools to empower consumer-citizens to make more sustainable food choices. Therefore, the thesis studies reasons for dietary resistance and attitude-behaviour gap to propose complementary strategies for food sustainability communication tools. Second, the thesis uses the constructive design research approach to define the strategic targets of a food sustainability index, and to apply it to a real-life context of lunch cafeterias in Finland. The thesis findings suggest several complementary strategies for food sustainability communication tools to more effectively facilitate dietary change: a) knowledge accessibility to raise awareness about the scale of different food product sustainability, as well as awareness about the scale of needed dietary change; b) consideration of the context of the tool application and interventions to link the tools to affordable, accessible, attractive and socially acceptable food alternatives; c) parallel and supportive campaigns and activities that allow experimentation and consumerinvolvement; and d) supportive governmental strategies, such as relevant policy and taxation change. The study of the possible strategic targets for a food sustainability index and the index application in a real-life context, have identified several findings. To respond to the agriculture field and consumer-citizen sensitivity about dietary change, data and strategies relevant to Finnish context were prioritised for the food sustainability index application. Furthermore, the three-threshold levels of the index were defined as rather suggestions and not strict limits to promote progress vs regress thinking about sustainability. Ultimately, to limit the resource-intensive data needs, food products were categorised and included in an online data depository for simpler future applications.Description
Supervisor
Jalas, MikkoThesis advisor
Marttila, TatuM. Amadae, Sonja
Keywords
food sustainability communication, sustainable food consumption, constructive design research, dietary change, design for sustainability, food sustainability index
