In the absence of comprehensive and timely government action at the food-system level, enabling individuals to make healthier and more sustainable food choices may allow growing community concerns about climate change and the environment to translate into everyday food choices that also have important health benefits. Greater understanding of food sustainability also has the potential to increase public support for the highly disruptive government policies that will be needed to achieve the required substantial changes to food production and food marketing systems.
The forthcoming revision of the Australian Dietary Guidelines is expected to support the shift to healthier and more sustainable diets by providing guidance across nutrition and food sustainability domains. This guidance will need to be translated into effective methods of conveying key concepts and decision-making strategies to the public. This presentation will outline research undertaken to test various forms of information provision relevant to this complex task.
Simultaneously communicating information about nutritional composition, ultra-processing, food sustainability across multiple environmental indicators, and the environmental impacts of food packaging presents substantial challenges. These challenges are compounded by the incomplete overlap between healthy and sustainable food choices, requiring individuals to make trade-offs that they are currently ill-equipped to navigate. Such complex and varied information needs to be delivered in both real-world and online environments and relate to foods consumed both inside and outside the home. These efforts need to be made within the context of pervasive marketing of unhealthy and unsustainable foods that competes with and undermines public health messaging. Food procurement processes must also be considered to embed healthier and more sustainable foods in large institutions and reduce food waste. This presentation will address these challenges to provide insights and recommendations, and to highlight critical evidence gaps that remain unresolved.