Sustainable Food Consumption And Urban Lifestyles

The lifestyles and food consumption patterns of India's new urban middle classes are changing rapidly. Emerging trends such as the growing popularity of fast food and convenience food and the increasing consumption of animal products, sugar and fat are causing adverse environmental, health and social effects. In order to counter these trends, effective strategies for promoting sustainable food consumption patterns are urgently needed. This empirical case study combines a revised update of the study "The Market for Organic Food: Consumer Attitudes and Marketing Opportunities" (Osswald and Dittrich 2009) with a broader perspective on the socio-cultural contexts of sustainable food consumption. The study outlines how "sustainable food choices" can be defined in the Indian context, and examines spatial structures of the market for products from sustainable agriculture in the South Indian emerging megacity of Hyderabad. It explores socio-cultural contexts of sustainable food consumption, outlines target groups for marketing organic food and identifies obstacles to sustainable food consumption. The findings point to a moderate but growing demand for organic food, especially among the middle classes. Availability is limited and not able to satisfy the demand at this stage. Most consumers are motivated almost exclusively by health considerations; awareness of the links between environmental problems and food choices is low. Based on these findings, the report assesses the potential for future development of the organic segment as part of a sustainable urban food system, and develops recommendations for action in order to promote sustainable food consumption in Hyderabad.

Food consumption patterns and practices are rapidly changing in Asia and the Pacific, and nowhere are these changes more striking than in urban areas. This book brings together scholars from anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, tourism, architecture and development studies to provide a comprehensive examination of food consumption trends in the cities of Asia and the Pacific, including household food consumption, eating out and food waste. The chapters cover different scales of analysis, from household research to national data, and combine different methodologies and approaches, from quantifiable data that show how much people consume to qualitative findings that reveal how and why consumption takes place in urban settings. Detailed case studies are included from China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam, as well as Hawai'i and Australia. The book makes a timely contribution to current debates on the challenges and opportunities for socially just and environmentally sound food consumption in urbanizing Asia and the Pacific. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138120617_oachapter3.pdf

Faced with a global threat to food security, it is perfectly possible that society will respond, not by a dystopian disintegration, but rather by reasserting co-operative traditions. This book, by a leading expert in urban agriculture, offers a genuine solution to today’s global food crisis. By contributing more to feeding themselves, cities can allow breathing space for the rural sector to convert to more organic sustainable approaches. Biel’s approach connects with current debates about agroecology and food sovereignty, asks key questions, and proposes lines of future research. He suggests that today’s food insecurity – manifested in a regime of wildly fluctuating prices – reflects not just temporary stresses in the existing mode of production, but more profoundly the troubled process of generating a new one. He argues that the solution cannot be implemented at a merely technical or political level: the force of change can only be driven by the kind of social movements which are now daring to challenge the existing unsustainable order.Drawing on both his academic research and teaching, and 15 years’ experience as a practicing urban farmer, Biel brings a unique interdisciplinary approach to this key global issue, creating a dialogue between the physical and social sciences

For Hunger Proof Cities: Sustainable urban food systems

Agricultural and food consumption practices are the most important contributors to ecosystem degradation and climate change. Consumers are called on to take responsibility for sustainable development; to consider the environment in their everyday life, to choose more sustainably produced goods and services. However, often consumers are not directly involved in food production and preparation. Today many of the meals we eat are prepared by someone other than ourselves. In addition, environmental and social issues of food production might be important to us but they have to be weighed up against a range of situational and personal considerations. Thus 'making a sustainable choice' can be far from straightforward. This book explores the question 'how sustainable food consumption can be encouraged' using social practices theory. This approach focuses not on the individual behaviour of consumers, but on everyday food practices (like shopping for food, eating lunch at work, etc.) and their context. The book discusses how Dutch consumers engage in sustainable food consumption on an everyday basis, and how consumers with different grocery shopping practices differ in this engagement. A second study considers the sustainable development of food provisioning within business catering (food procurement and provisioning). Here we discover the importance of food professionals and the opportunities that canteens and kitchens offer to explore more sustainable ways of eating. Both studies illustrate how a context-oriented approach leads to insights on where we find leverage points for changing consumption patterns.

With over half the world's population now deemed to be urbanised, cities are assuming a larger role in political debates about the security and sustainability of the global food system. Hence, planning for sustainable food production and consumption is becoming an increasingly important issue for planners, policymakers, designers, farmers, suppliers, activists, business and scientists alike. The rapid growth of the food planning movement owes much to the fact that food, because of its unique, multi-functional character, helps to bring people together from all walks of life. In the wider contexts of global climate change, resource depletion, a burgeoning world population, competing food production systems and diet-related public health concerns, new paradigms for urban and regional planning capable of supporting sustainable and equitable food systems are urgently needed. This book addresses this urgent need. By working at a range of scales and with a variety of practical and theoretical models, this book reviews and elaborates definitions of sustainable food systems, and begins to define ways of achieving them. To this end 4 different themes have been defined as entry-points into the discussion of 'sustainable food planning'. These are (1) urban agriculture, (2) integrating health, environment and society, (3) food in urban design and planning and (4) urban food governance.

This book uncovers the multiple layers of challenges posed to achieve sustainable human health and improves the understanding of interactive areas set by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (1) no poverty, (2) zero hunger, (3) good health and wellbeing, (6) clean water and sanitation, and (11) sustainable cities and communities. The book focuses on conceptual understanding, food, nutrition, lifestyle, and their integration to reinforce the ideas of holistic health principles.' The most important drivers of sustainable health are food, nutrition, and lifestyle. Healthy food is a basic need of human beings. In under-developed regions, people are underweight and facing malnutrition, with a prevalence of deficiency diseases due to low intake of micro-nutrients such as vitamin A, iodine, and protein among others. A good diet as well as lifestyle has a tremendous bearing on a person’s health, emotional stability, and enthusiasm for life. The global coronavirus pandemic has brought unimaginable devastation and hardship in all corners of the globe, questioning the existing healthcare services, health policies, and health planning across the developed and developing countries. It has also exposed the lacunae in understanding health, the base of human happiness. The global community needs to gravely ponder the health issues we are facing and explore sustainable solutions for health recovery and the wellbeing of humanity.