From Vision to Action: How Behaviour Shapes Sustainable Food Systems

ECH Editorial Team: From your perspective as an environmental psychologist, how relevant is the EAT-Lancet Report for understanding the human and social dimensions of transforming global food systems? Or, to put it another way: As an environmental psychologist, what answers does the EAT-Lancet Report offer on how human and social dimensions shape global food systems, and what are these answers?

Sabine Pahl: I think the report is incredibly important, because it provides an integrated vision of what’s needed. Rather than a piecemeal approach separating production and consumption or focusing on specific food groups, it presents a systematic vision we need to head for. Importantly, it focuses on two types of consequences: human health and the environment, emphasising how closely connected these are. 

ECH Editorial Team: The report emphasises dietary shifts, such as reducing meat consumption and increasing plant-based foods. What social-psychological factors make these changes easier or harder for people to adopt? 

Sabine Pahl: Food is tightly connected to identities, social relations and culture, next to affordability. Family meals bring people together all over the world, and providing and cooking food for one‘s family has deep emotional aspects beyond just nutrition and survival. Specific foods are imbued with deep meaning, for example meat eating is associated with wealth and power in many countries, as something to aspire to, but also specifically with masculinity. Research in Western cultures has shown that vegetarians are perceived as more feminine, virtuous, moral and intelligent, and also as pacifist and liberal, indicating how expectations and stereotypes form around dietary patterns. 

ECH Editorial Team: Food choices are deeply embedded in culture, identity, and habit. How can insights from social-psychology help translate global recommendations, like those in the EAT-Lancet Report, into effective action at local or national levels?

Sabine Pahl: People struggle with information overload, even when they have the best of intentions. Specific recommendations such as the WHO's “everyone should have at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day” are extremely helpful.  In addition, labelling can be helpful, but labels can also be complex and require difficult tradeoffs, for example between health, environmental and social sustainability. Even experts come to different conclusion when modelling such characteristics, so how can we expect consumers to make perfect decisions when they are in a rush to get pick up the kids from school and make dinner? So in any case labels need to be easy to understand, for example using a traffic light approach, and they need to rely on a trustworthy and independent testing system to change behaviour.

ECH Editorial Team: As you said, food systems are complex, spanning ecological, nutritional, social and behavioural dimensions. Based on your experience, why is it essential to take an interdisciplinary approach to connect psychological insights with ecological and agricultural science in order to shape sustainable food systems? 

Sabine Pahl: The EAT Lancet report is an impressive piece of work with strong messages. The thing I’m most missing in the summary relates to the translation of the vision, the steps from the current reality to where we need to be. Given how closely food is entwined with identity, emotion, social relations, politics, how are we going to get to the vision the report presents? It needs a lot more engagement of social and behavioural scientists to move towards the ambitious goals of the report, in parallel with economic and legal transitions to make the get from the abstract and hypothetical high-level vision to people’s daily lives. Such integration of perspectives from different disciplines is exactly what the ECH is aiming for – we need the hard facts and the modelling that offers a solution, but we need to think even harder on how to engage society in different visions, to link to people’s concerns, desires and behaviours; otherwise we’re not going anywhere.