Constructing a food retail environment that encourages healthy diets in cities: the contribution of local-level policy makers and civil society

Faced with growing rates of malnutrition, food environments play a key role in shaping eating habits and in helping transition towards healthy diets. Much of the attention on food environment policies has been directed at the national level. Less attention has been devoted to what happens at local level, at the measures being taken by local government policy makers and by other local-level actors to encourage healthier diets, especially in cities. The objective of this article is thus to give an overview of the contribution “from below” to the construction of healthier food environments, that is, to shed light on the specific contribution of local-level policies and initiatives in making nutritious food more available, affordable, and desirable and conversely in making unhealthy foods, such as fast foods and ultra-processed foods, less so. In doing so, it focuses on the retail food environment (RFE) as a specific contribution of cities. A critical review of evaluated local-level policies sheds light on the nature and effectiveness of different types of interventions and on the complementary actions of local government and civil society, where the latter contributes to communicating a different way of “knowing” food in line with a greater appreciation of healthier foods, and to advocating for an integration of sustainability aspects in the transition towards healthy diets. The article reflects upon areas where further efforts and adjustments are needed to make interventions more effective, and emphasizes the need to continue supporting local-level civil society RFE actions, and ensure coordination and coherence between different players and between different administrative levels

Framework for LL facilitation and data production

The Deliverable 5.1 “Framework for LL facilitation and data production” is intended for all Living Labs and all DIVINFOOD project partners. This document provides a framework to situate LLs’ definition and contribution to the overall aim of the DIVINFOOD project. It orients LL coordinators throughout the setting up and development of living lab interactions, experiments and data collection. It also suggests tools to support LL facilitation and interactions at local level

La Feria e le pratiche alimentari in Costa Rica: implicazioni per le politiche sugli ambienti alimentari

The changing face of malnutrition, that includes a global rise in levels of obesity, has brought to the fore the importance of re-shaping food retail environments in such a way as to make them more conducive to consuming healthy diets. Food retail environment metrics have centered around measuring the “external” food environment, i.e. the availability (and relative price) of healthy/unhealthy outlets in specific neighbourhoods measured in terms of proximity and density. Faced with inconclusive results on the correlation between the objective food environment data and dietary intake, more recent approaches have called for a greater attention to more “subjective” aspects of the food environment. In this context, this thesis introduces social practice theory – enriched with a spatial dimension - as a sociological framework that can better explain the underlying drivers of why people choose certain outlets rather than others. Given the dialectical relationship between food practices and the “external” food environment, it also helps to better understand the role of food outlets in shaping desirability and food practices. The thesis rests on three hypotheses: namely that people’s food practices, which include people’s movements in space in relation to food, influence their choices of food outlets; that by so doing they also influence their dietary patterns; and that food outlets in which people shop influence their food practices. In order to address the above hypotheses, the research has used the case study of Farmers’ Markets in Costa Rica, and has employed a mixed-methods approach. Overall, 35 respondents were interviewed on their food practices – intended as being made up of the meaning, the competence and the material aspects linked to food – and on their dietary patterns. Data was also collected on their residential food environments and on the relative density of healthy/unhealthy outlets in select areas that respondents regularly visit. Results show that the food practices people are engaged in help steer the way people interact with their external environment. In the case of people who visit the Feria, there is a dominant “colour” of meaning that emerges from people’s narratives, governed by a concern for health and wholeness, which includes conviviality, and a domestic repertoire of justification based on trust and tradition. This, and the related suite of tacit and embodied competences that they have learnt and strengthened in the Feria, is what has drawn them first and kept them subsequently within the Feria, with positive implications for their dietary patterns. Their movements in space, and the way they interact with their external environment, testifies to respondents’ commitment to a certain “healthy” way of “knowing” food. There are, however, certain “minimum” aspects of the external environment that need to be in place in order to attract and sustain healthy elements in people’s food practices, and the thesis concludes by sketching out the role of policymakers in making sure that these aspects are put in place in a way that takes existing food practices into consideration

Understanding the Food Environment: the Role of Practice Theory and Policy Implications

The last decade has witnessed an increase in the number of malnourished people worldwide, and particularly of people suffering from overweight and obesity. Research has shown the link between diet quality and the under- lying food systems through the intermediation of the food environment. Specifically, a number of studies have analysed the role of the food retail environment and its impact on dietary intake largely by using quantitative geospatial tools – an approach that has been criticized on the grounds of its limited integration of social aspects linked to people’s daily paths and lifestyles. This chapter contributes to a better understanding of the food environment by using social practice theory. Social practice theory can help complement the ‘objective’ measures used to study the retail environment, with more ‘subjective’ measures linked to its more symbolic and social dimensions by using more qualitative and/or mixed methods. With a view to changing people’s food patterns, it is of fundamental importance to understand how food environments shape practices and vice versa, and where change can come about. In some cases, change can be triggered at the level of the material aspects of the food environment, such as the physical outlets where people buy their foods, and sometimes it can be triggered (also) by a change in the meaning attributed to food. This has implications for the types of policies adopted by governments and relevant stakeholders: policies need to be consistent and coherent, and aimed at changing both the material aspects of the food environment as well as the competence people need to make it work and the meaning attached to healthy eating

Destabilizing the food regime “from within”: Tools and strategies used by urban food policy actors

In the context of food transition studies scant attention has been given to the role of state authorities (be they local or national) in destabilizing the dominant food regime. Specifically, little is known about how state-based regime actors use the power at their disposal to bring about change “from within”. Using a political economy approach and data from qualitative research with local government actors in 10 European cities, this paper explores the different power instruments utilized by (local) government authorities to undermine the material, organizational and discursive base of the (conventional) agri-food regime. What emerges from our research is that local authorities have used a mix of discursive, material and organizational tools to alter the dominant narrative around food and have reoriented material resources towards activities that support a new approach to food. Obstacles in this transition pathway lie in ensuring internal coordination within cities and vertical alliances with higher administrative levels

Co-creativity in Living Labs: fostering creativity in co-creation processes to transform food systems

International audienceIn this article, the authors aim to reflect on the relationship between collaborative creation and creativity ('co-creativity') within Living Lab (LL) research and innovation in the domain of agri-food systems.While the value of LL is often perceived to be the collaboration among its participants, there is a need to capture and measure the process of co-creation.Co-creativity is indicated by the literature to be a necessary research and collaborative component of social change, as well as for promoting a transformative sustainability agenda.This article uses empirical and primary data collected in the context of the DIVINFOOD project to show the extent to which researchers actively promote, manage and respond to the effects of collaborative creativity within their research. Collaborative creativity is an indispensable component of the co-creation process because it supports collaborative learning. The authors conclude that measuring co-creativity could be an interesting indicator to monitor the development of LLs over time

The MedDiet 4.0 framework

The notion of the Mediterranean Diet has undergone a progressive evolution over the past 50 years – from a healthy dietary pattern to a new model of sustainable diet. This paper presents the Med Diet 4.0 as a comprehensive sustainable Mediterranean diet model, in which three additional sustainable dimensions - environmental, socio-cultural and economic - are incorporated and valorized together with its well documented health and nutrition benefits. The Med Diet 4.0 aims also to highlights the value of the Mediterranean diet as an outstanding sustainable resource for the Mediterranean countries to enhance the sustainability of their food systems. The Med Diet 4.0 model was developed within the ongoing FAO/CIHEAM case study on the Mediterranean diet as sustainable diet model. It is presented as an outcome of a historical collaborative effort by many of the co-authors and their institutions committed towards the enhancement of the Mediterranean diet heritage. In 2014, the International Foundation of Mediterranean Diet (IFMeD) was established as an international pole of multi-disciplinary knowledge and expertise as well as a guarantor for scientific, economic and institutional actors interested in supporting the Mediterranean Diet. As one of its priority activities, the Med Diet 4.0 model was developed with the aims to catalyse a renewed broader interest - from the general public, to policy makers and academia, as well as to foster broader multi-stakeholder partnerships for the advancement of the Mediterranean diet. Despite its increasing popularity worldwide, adherence to the Mediterranean diet is decreasing for multifactorial reasons – life styles changes, food globalization, economic and socio-cultural circumstances. These factors pose serious threats to the preservation and transmission of the Mediterranean diet heritage to present and future generations. Today’s challenge is to reverse these trends