What about a food culture change for a better future?

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The food we are eating has always been changing since thousands of years ago. So why shouldn’t we move this ongoing change in the direction of healthier and more environmentally friendly nutrition in our food cultures across the world?

Could you imagine for example Europe with more sustainable local cuisines? Let us dive into the possibilities.

Content

Status quo - An idea from a Europe trip

So many great options and their advantages

Why it could work

What we need for a successful food culture change

Summary

List of references

“sustainable” in this blogpost qualitatively describes: “More resource-efficient and generally more environmentally friendly than meat and dairy products”

“healthy” in this blogpost qualitatively describes: “Consumable as staple foods on a daily basis without common negative impacts on average people“

Status quo - An idea from a Europe trip

While I was travelling through a large part of Europe by interrail last summer, I gave myself the mission to research and try local foods in every country. During these travels (and tastings), it got very clear that most traditional foods in Europe contain meat and are often quite heavy due to a lot of fat. There is also an abundance of sweets that contain a lot of sugar. In addition, most of the typical local drinks that I could find were alcoholic.

Because I still wanted to eat like a local, I had to eat less healthy and more meat than I usually do. Obviously, this got me thinking about where all these meals come from and why they are so popular. Then I remembered a few things that I learned already before and which are easy to notice with a little bit of consciousness:

Many of the traditional foods we are eating now, have not been that popular or didn’t even exist in these areas not so long ago. I noticed and remembered the following three kinds of foods:

  • Recent developments and food hypes that were created on purpose by companies for economic reasons:

    • “Taco Fredag” in Sweden and Norway, which were created in the 1990s by different advertisements that implemented a “cozy friday” [atlas obscura].

    • Short-term hypes like those of bubble teas and bubble waffles of which the very good products tend to stay.

  • Imported several hundreds years ago and consequently established as “traditional” ingredients:

    • Bacalhau (salted, dried codfish) in Portugal from North America and then Norway [tasteoflisboa].

    • Potatoes from South America were finally established as a staple food in Europe in the 18th century because they are easy-to-grow and hidden from invaders and could replace low or destroyed grain harvests [BBC].

  • Successfully implemented on purpose for political reasons:

    • Pad Thai as the national dish by the prime minister of Thailand during the Second World War [scmp] (you can find my personal Pad Thai recipes here).

These examples just show that food culture is not as consistent as it may seem and that there are many ways to establish new dishes and ingredients. It may not be that difficult to create more sustainable food cultures after all. I could well imagine new and more sustainable local foods related to their regions.

Don’t get me wrong. The following gallery shows some delicious meals that I also enjoyed and would like to eat again. What I would like to have, are more and better alternatives that can be eaten on a daily basis. I often wished during my travels that I could have promoted more local foods without feeling guilty that they are not the best for your health and / or our planet.

While meats, fats and sugars are abundant ingredients in many “typical foods you have to try when in…”, I found it very difficult to find more sustainable and healthy options that are typical for every country. The only really healthy local food that stuck to my mind is the “Bircher Muesli” from Zürich in Switzerland, which was actually invented by a doctor to serve as a healthy and easily digestible dinner [house of switzerland].

As a foodie who enjoys all kinds of foods to celebrate their tastes, textures, preparation and origin, I would like to point out that a food culture change is not a 100% shift change for me, but rather establishing more sustainable foods as mainstream.

If 80% of the food we consume would be more sustainable, we would already have moved a lot (explained in more detail in Why it could work below). And the amazing, but not so healthy and less sustainable foods we still love, receive the special celebration they deserve, e.g. on a Sunday family dinner. When eating them less often, they naturally become more special, and we probably further increase their quality due to the higher willingness to pay from making them more special.

So many options and their potential advantages

We should develop more and spread more local and healthy foods like the “Muesli”, which has been very popular and widely available for many decades now.

There are so many new and exciting options, which we haven’t completely explored or even discovered yet. Food preparation has always been creative, and it started developing much quicker in recent years with new ideas spreading via the internet.

The following ingredients have shown potential to enable the list of advantages of a new and more sustainable food culture in Europe. Next to the overview, I added several links to more detailed websites in case you would like to dive deeper into the topic:

Examples of ingredients (producible in different European countries):

For more detailed information you can check out the linked sources (also in the list of references).


Potential advantages of further developing and establishing these alternative ingredients more in the mainstream:

  • Climate: Alternative proteins create much less CO2e emissions than meat and dairy products and within grain, vegetable and fruit choices there are also possibilities for more climate-friendly options [our world in data]

  • Environment in general: Similarly to carbon emissions, meat and dairy products require much more other resources like land and water than their alternatives because the animals first need to be fed plants. In addition to saving these resources, reducing meat production also decreases the loss of biodiversity, the spreading of antibiotic resistance and infectious diseases. (ProVeg)

  • Health & nutrition: Reducing high-glycaemic carbohydrate foods especially with refined sugars and grains can prevent and limit the development of civilization diseases that started spreading with the “Western diet” [Wolfgang Kopp]. The shift to a (mostly) plant-based diet usually is also beneficial for your health and can be easily executed well when considering a few important aspects for the nutrients that are less abundant in plant-based products. [ProVeg]

  • Animal welfare: Less required industrial livestock farming simply means less cruelty to animals and fewer animals being killed. I hope there’s no need to read more about this aspect in this context.

  • Social justice: First of all, plant-based food is a great option to fight world hunger because of the much smaller resource need for food production [ProVeg]. Reducing land and water use also makes it easier to distribute these scarce resources more fairly with the local population. In addition, the building of new businesses and industries also contains the great option of generally establishing more sustainable business practices and fairer supply chains to replace more exploitative existing structures.

  • Taste: Last, but not least, new ingredients allow for completely new flavor combinations. Once the paradigm of meat or fish on the plate with a side of potato, wheat or rice is loosened, a whole new world of potential ingredient combinations and cooking procedures opens up. This is just one overview of multiple dishes that can be created with cauliflower as a diversely usable vegetable for example and there are so many more opportunities.

I hope you could get a good overview of just a few of the potential ingredients and their advantages. The following “gallery for inspiration” shows an overview of the local and modern / fusion meals that I’ve tried on my Interrail travels across Europe and that could be spread more due to their potential advantages compared to other local foods.
(To show the description on your phone you need to tap on the photo and then hover above it or press the tiny dot in the bottom-right corner of the photo.)

Why it could work

Based on the fairly quick developments in the past I consider it realistic to successfully execute a major food culture change throughout the next 30 years until ca. 2050. Just think about which foods were not popular yet when you were a child or the difference of your parents’ diet when compared to yours now.

Sometimes, it were just certain cuisines that became popular like Japanese food especially with sushi or also ramen, or individual meals and snacks like the in Germany very popular “Döner Kebab” and “Currywurst”. Even more importantly, food brands and convenience foods only had the possibility to be spread quickly internationally since “modern supermarkets” with a large product variety and self-service were established and mass media allowed for large marketing campaigns.

We can now use this accelerating speed of establishing new ingredients, meals and complete cuisines especially as no complete change or abstinence is needed to reach a huge ecological impact for our climate:

If ~80% of all people only substituted 80% of their meat and dairy consumption with much more sustainable alternatives, CO2e emissions from Livestock & Manure could theoretically be reduced by 1,5 billion tons of CO2e and more per year [our world in data, carbon footprint of foods].
(Conservative calculation excl. the required deforestation and agriculture for feed production: ca. 3 bio. t CO2e emissions from Livestock & Manure, reduced by 80%*80%*ca. 80% reduced CO2e emissions with alternatives)

It works similarly for our health and social justice, where it is neither required to change everything to merely start making a difference.

A major advantage for spreading new dishes and driving a food culture change is the large traveling population and the speed at which they are discovering new places. It both creates the required openness for new experiences (dishes) and the possibility to spread them by talking about them offline and online or even physically by cooking them at home.

The taste of Germans for example has changed throughout the last decades and the gastronomy is working to adapt and diversify (according to Marin Trenk, “Döner Hawaii”). Today, we can thus choose between a lot more ingredients and preparations methods and leverage these to create and find new and more sustainable meals.

Personally, I found several tasty plant-based foods, which naturally make 80% of my meals vegan and healthy with very limited sugar, wheat and fats:

  • A cereal mixture with oats, and a variety of nuts and seeds which I usually eat as overnight oats or porridge with oat milk and berries for breakfast.

  • Plant-based bread spreads and nut butters as alternative bread toppings.

  • Tofu, Seitan and other plant-based proteins for curries, stir-fries, and all kinds of simple and tasty meals, which work very well for meal-prepping.

  • A variety of one-pot dishes often with legumes, vegetables and a variety of carbs different to just white rice or pasta.

I’m now eating animal-derived products only in 0-4 meals per week (out of ~21 meals) and am always happy to try new products and cooking procedures. The following gallery is meant to give an overview for inspiration.

What we need for a successful food culture change

For the possibility to execute a food culture change, the following 2 aspects would help tremendously:

  1. First of all need amazing new foods that are tasty, have a pleasant texture, are nutritious and healthy and more sustainable than the current products in the market.

  2. A joint effort from multiple stakeholders to drive the food culture change based on these “new” foods.

How to create amazing new foods as alternative products

If we imagine a company working on a food culture change, we need the R&D, Engineering and Product Development departments to start the work alongside “business builders” that create the required foundations and funding.

There are many great options and ideas as described, such that we need to test and try while still staying open-minded and creative to reflect, reconsider and pivot if necessary:

  • Invest in the “most effective climate changing technology” according to this report by BCG.
    I assume that this has remained mostly unchanged since 2022 apart from maybe carbon removal technologies that are pushed for example by investments from Frontier Climate to build up a portfolio on gigaton-scale.

  • Research and develop continuously new ingredients, processes, and tangible products, which are constantly improved with new developments.

  • Produce and test rigorously the new ingredients and dishes to collect feedback and keep improving them.

  • Build companies that will not only sell, but also improve these products, their production and distribution within an organization that is built to continue doing so in the long-term.

  • Implement overarching political plans like the Danish action plan, which support the whole process to become a leading country in plant-based food production and export.

- Sidenote: In case a food start-up needs support to build up efficient operations setup and an effective organization, I can support it in the process: https://www.effectiveimpact.consulting/build-succesful-food-start-ups. -

Any new vegan product won’t be the solution, though. Alternative products need to meet several requirements in order to be better than the status-quo and worth spreading:

An illustrative list of the high-level requirements for better food products

  • Tasty enough and with a pleasant texture so consumers want more of it;

  • Cost-efficient so that all people of a society and especially the locals can afford them;

  • Resource-efficient and more environmentally friendly to actually be ecologically more sustainable options;

  • Healthy enough to be consumed in reasonable quantities without common negative impacts on average people;

  • Protecting animals and humans likewise;

  • Locally sourced ingredients as a foundation to minimize transport emissions and costs for the largest part of the meals;

  • With a local touch: Somehow matching the taste profiles and preparation methods of the respective local culture or in other ways meeting the locals’ desires;

  • More resilient to climate change and other risks (in the best case).


Some alternatives on a good way exist already, but despite the possibility to buy these consciously, most customers continue buying the cheap, full-of sugar and flavor enhancers, less fair and less environmentally sustainable products.

A German proverb says: “Die Moral stirbt am Regal”. It means that the morality does not lead to the purchasing decision, but other factors. Unfortunately, there is a human tendency to prefer artificially sweet and salty tastes, and prioritize cheap prizes over other factors, although many of us would like to act differently when consciously reflecting our behaviour.

Therefore, we need a cultural change that starts deeply inside our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors in addition to optimizing the products and their taste.

Some ideas how to jointly drive the cultural change

I just gathered a wide range of ideas and information what could help to jointly drive a food culture change in the following paragraphs. This is just scratching on the top of an iceberg resembling the complex challenge to drive cultural change and requires much more in-depth expertise that is applied interdisciplinary.

The need for great marketing

It needs to be “super hot”, go viral and make the consumers happy. We thus need a typical “marketing & sales job”.

Instead of pushing just another copy of consumer products with a different brand, the whole marketing expertise that was developed throughout the last decades based on the human psychology could be used to drive urgent changes with high-potential positive impacts. Convincing humans to eat healthier and more sustainable could be one of these aspects in addition to fighting climate change, right-wing extremists’ growth, social inequality and the widening gap between the poor and rich, etc.

Keeping communications positive and engaging

The whole communication should remain positively connotated to convince individuals without scaring off too many people who would consequently block communications and isolate themselves with their habits and opinions. In order to convince 80% of the worldwide population, it is required to go across all social groups. Therefore, the title of this blogpost is not the strict “we need a food culture change”, but a question in order not to scare off people straight away.

I gathered just some ideas here, how and by whom these positive communications could be executed effectively:

  • Execute governmental programs and campaigns to inform, encourage and enable like the introduction of Pad Thai.

  • Leveraging and combining large scale marketing possibilities like the creation of taco fredag in Scandinavia.

  • Encouraging individual storytelling.

  • Communicating via multiplicators on mass and social media.

  • Tying sustainable foods to local culture to spread them quicker and make them stick longer like the potato in the Global North or Bacalhau in Portugal.

  • …

Because professional cooks, hobby cooks and families likewise can “be seen as catalysts to stimulate demand across citizens” (about the Danish Action Plan), they also deserve trainings and resources to get started. Then they can create and their own success stories.

Exemplary organizations that lead the way

The Food Culture Alliance is already working on food culture change and thus has tested ideas and developed experience to work on 4 levers of change:

  1. Shaping Narratives - Feelings and Perceptions

  2. Addressing Social Identity - Expressing who we are through food

  3. Changing Beliefs - Ideas, Thoughts, Values

  4. Strengthening culinary systems - Meal patterns, flavour principles, cuisine

ProVeg International is a good example of an organization that is working on both ends: Creating the alternative, amazing new food products and driving the cultural change to “replace 50% of animal products, globally, with plant-based and cultivated foods by 2040”.

The Good Food Institute is another NGO that mostly works on improving, but also establishing alternative proteins. It also offers a free, self-paced, open-access online course that gives a great overall introduction, which I can recommend for anyone slightly interested in the topic - even "only" as a consumer.

The Germany Nutrition Society (DGE) made a first step towards such a healthier and more sustainable nutrition by updating their recommendations and reducing meat & fish consumption to 3 portions / week. Many of these mainstream suggestions towards the complete population can already make big differences. Although the 50% decrease of meat consumption to just 300g / week are not at 80% reduction yet, 50% less is a major change.

The Boston Consulting Group’s Social Impact consulting team noticed the sustainability and economical potential in alternative proteins and decarbonizing the food value chain early on, as well. On their food systems and food security page is a 5min video summarizing the required change towards regenerative agriculture. Here, you also can find some of their articles about the Future of Food Production, the Future of Consumption, and the Future of Food Retail and Distribution. In terms of driving a cultural change, their insights on consumer behavior point out that food brands have high potential, but also a challenging task to whet consumer's appetite for sustainable foods.

The Munich Food Convention 2024 was focused on the importance of regenerative agriculture to increase the health of the soil, the animals and people nurtured by it and the climate that profits from more carbon stored in the ground. Together with communal catering it is possible to first of all share more sustainable and healthier products to many people and meanwhile enthrail persons from all areas of our society of a tasty, healthier and more sustainable diet.
In addition, I personally believe that soil, climate or sugar taxes on products creating more damages than the alternative, could be a legitimate option to convince people of more sustainable and healthier products, because they increase the costs (a major decision criteria), while neither forcing people to stop consuming bad products nor creating large bureaucratic hurdles. From looking at alcohol taxes in Scandinavia, I assume that higher prices could help covering the additional costs of certain foods while still giving everyone the chance to enjoy their “guilty pleasures” when they want to.

Everyone can make a difference

Most importantly, we would all need to work together on this change. There will be differences between different ingredients and dishes that are promoted, but these should only be part of diversified tactics to work on the joint strategy of driving a positive food culture change towards our mutual objective of a more sustainable diet. And everyone can participate:

  • Research institutions and producers

  • Food brands and resellers

  • Professional and hobby cooks

  • Canteens and other catering services

  • Governments

  • NGOs

  • Media companies

  • Influencers

  • And you as a consumer.

In my opinion, especially people who are not following a strict vegan or other sustainable diet could start promoting vegan and healthy food. If these persons would support the change, their friends and family will notice that something is happening and might be convinced quicker, as well. Moreover, non-strict eaters will probably only be convinced by better alternative ingredients and dishes, which subsequently have higher chances to create widespread enthusiasm than not so far developed ones.

We “just” need a common approach that all stakeholders agree on and should be open to find and if necessary adjust for the best solutions.

Go step-by-step

Finally, it is also important to take small steps at a time in the process of driving a cultural change. This is needed to incorporate new ingredients and preparation methods without overburdening and scaring us human beings as the creatures of habits we are. We would naturally like to keep things as they are even though it is not good for us and our future. This is an aspect we need to acknowledge and act accordinglly.

Where would you like to start?

In which area are you most motivated and could create the largest impact? If you don’t feel like you want a food culture change, what are your doubts and fears?

Summary

Popular traditional food all over Europe is heavy in meat, wheat, sugar, and fat as I noticed on my Interrail trip last summer. On this journey, I got the idea that we should integrate more sustainable and healthy dishes in the local food cultures around Europe.

Such a food culture change to a more sustainable nutrition could create many advantages for our nature, society, and personal health. It may be a big and complex challenge, but one that can help effectively to have a very large positive impact in the food industry. We just need to start step-by-step by pushing the products with good potential that already exist so we can protect what still can be saved.

Although it is not clear yet, which products are best, every slightly better product helps a bit and once some products and meals have been verified to be much better, we can focus efforts on these to accelerate the change and make it more effective.

I would like to finish by emphasizing again that my idea is merely to establish more sustainable foods as mainstream while keeping other traditional foods we still love as the rare gems they deserve to be.

Some small actionable advice to finish-up:

  • Try something new and probably healthier and more sustainable at your next restaurant visit or grocery shopping. Either you’re going to like it and eat it more often or you had an interesting experience and can be happy about still staying open-minded.

  • Share your favorite vegan foods with friends so they can try them - especially if you’re not following a strict vegan diet.

  • Follow and support innovative companies and impact organizations on social media.

Closing remarks

I also wrote this blogpost to summarize my thoughts and because I want to accelerate the transition to the more sustainable food industry we need. I’m very happy to discuss my ideas. These are just the first thoughts on my mind to grasp a complex topic with high-potential and I would like to dive in a bit deeper.

In case anyone has some good ideas how to progress effectively or could discuss the challenge and possibilities with me, please reach out :)

List of references

Food history

Examples of ingredients:


Potential advantages of more sustainable ingredients:

What we need for a food culture change:

 
Niklas Hermes-BöhlefeldComment