Food systems impacts of COVID 19
Food systems impacts of COVID 19
Posted by Steve Guilbert
26 October 2020
By Prof. Michael Winter
I found myself in Grimsby recently talking about meat! Well not literally on the east coast, for it was yet another virtual encounter. The National Food Strategy invited me to be an ‘expert’ for one of their public dialogue events and a fascinating evening it proved to be. I have had a number of experiences of public engagement events over the years and this one was no exception in proving to be stimulating and fun with a touch of the unexpected thrown in. I can’t breach confidentiality by revealing the views of the Grimsby people I ‘met’. But I can say how impressed I was by their willingness to engage with the excellent material prepared by the NFS team and contribute to some stimulating debate on the issue of meat consumption. The debate was wide ranging and certainly not confined only to health and/or methane and climate change. I look forward to seeing what use the NFS makes of insights drawn from the public dialogues.
I drew particular satisfaction from the Grimsby conversations for two reasons: first the non- confrontational nature of the exchanges in contrast to other discussions on the topic I have on occasion been party to; and secondly, the novelty of some of the thinking. There has not been a great deal new said on the meat debate in recent research publications that I have seen – the climate change and dietary arguments now follow a rather well-worn path. But I sat up when I saw the title of a new publication from the Global Food Security Programme, mainly because I didn’t initially understand it: ‘Low-agency population interventions to reduce meat consumption’ (Reynolds et al 2020). It transpires that agency in this context refers to people’s ability or inclination to act, and therefore low-agency population interventions are those that require little or no engagement from the individuals affected. Does this mark a shift from the behaviour change agenda that has been rather dominant for quite a while in debates about shifting people towards more sustainable and healthy lifestyles? Well a single academic paper does not amount to a policy shift, so only time will tell whether the low-agency approach has traction. But what exactly does it mean in practice? The authors propose low-agency population interventions as a response to the intention-behaviour gap citing studies that have shown that a willingness amongst some consumers to reduce meat consumption may not lead to a change in levels of consumption. This is usually put down to the widespread availability of meat, large portion sizes, marketing, and the low cost of less healthy foods. In this context it is ‘unlikely that the sole provision of information about the health and environmental risks associated with meat consumption will reduce its consumption’. The alternative low agency approach is where:
… food environments are designed to encourage individuals to make healthier and more sustainable food choices without limiting their freedom of choice. In these environments, extreme levels of self-control would not be required to avoid the overconsumption of meat. Instead, changes to the environment would guide individuals toward consuming less meat with minimal conscious engagement and may therefore be more effective and equitable than other strategies. This approach can also change norms; being provided with smaller portion sizes can lead to individuals choosing smaller portions in other settings. Low-agency population interventions include taxes on less healthy foods or nudging strategies like changing the availability and placement of food products, reformulating food products and changing portion sizes. These approaches have been demonstrated to reduce individuals’ excess consumption of many types of food (e.g. chocolate, hot meals, crisps) and therefore have potential for reducing meat consumption.
The authors have systematically reviewed a wide range of literature to explore the various low agency options and are careful to point out how robust the evidence and data are for each option. Except that this careful objectivity slips in the conclusions where they say that ‘stakeholders working to produce and sell meat products throughout the food system are likely to oppose such interventions’. For this bold claim they cite a single reference which is a study of fast food vendors near secondary schools in disadvantaged Scottish neighbourhoods and is based on interviews with ten fast food shop managers. I would suggest that this rather specific source hardly provides sufficient evidence to make a claim about what might happen throughout the food system, a system which is highly complex and diverse and which our research is seeking to uncover and explain.