Supermarket or consumer: Who’s in the driver’s seat for changing our food habits

On Tuesday 26 November, Rikolto, EUFIC, the Polish Foodbank Olzstyn and researchers from UGent and the Finnish VTT presented their results after two years of collaboration in the EIT Food SUCCESS project. The main question of this project was: how can citizens and supermarkets take steps towards more plant-based food and less food waste? Maarten Corten from Rikolto attended the webinar and shares his personal reflections.

Who's in the driver's seat for changing our food habits? The supermarket, the food producer, the government or the consumer? To be honest, I am so done with this endless discussion. Mainly because blaming citizens for their consumer behaviour feels like an easy excuse for major actors in the food system to not fully address the big challenges. Indeed, the results of the EIT Food SUCCESS project also confirm that we can lay this blame game to rest.

Citizens can change...

Take the Polish Food Bank's 'Shop & Cook workshops' in Olsztyn. There, citizens learned to make sustainable choices in the supermarket and then cook sustainably in the kitchen. Their knowledge was assessed before and after the workshop, and the effect was clear: even long after the training, participants started using zero-waste cooking and plant-based recipes. Moreover, they shared their new cooking skills with friends and family. Citizens are not only capable of learning new eating habits, they also like to spread them in their social network.

... but not on their own

Of course, participants in these workshops are willing and motivated to change. But research shows that, in fact, many people are aware of their ecological impact and want to change their eating habits to reduce said impact. However, they mostly do not succeed to put this resolution into practice. The Finnish research centre VTT also mapped consumer profiles within the SUCCESS project. Alongside a group of dedicated believers, they found a large group of people that want to eat more sustainably, but do not get around to it. Bridging that attitude-behaviour gap is the main challenge in the transition to more plant-based eating habits and less food waste. The Polish workshops have succeeded in bridging that gap with flying colours, but if we want to change eating habits on a large scale, we need scalable interventions. That is why we are looking at supermarkets.