Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Due to compounding challenges in the food system, governments, businesses, and academics have been seeking to create more integrated food policy that reduces conflicts and amplifies synergies. In an attempt to create greater coherence, aspirational tools such as the sustainable diets framework have been developed with the aim of better understanding and reconciling health, ecological, economic, and social goals across different policy actors and food sectors. While many sustainability actors operate within the food system, it is often unclear how they inadvertently support or undermine each other. This incoherence means that conflicts can occur, and sustainability goals are not met. This is particularly the case for sustainable restaurants who are both praised for supporting local or seasonal food and condemned for undermining public health. As such, it is unclear in what way sustainable restaurants are contributing to or undermining the aspirational goals of sustainable diets. This study sought to fill that gap by surveying 29 sustainable restaurant decision makers and conducting a coherence analysis using the sustainable diets framework as a benchmarking tool. The results show that sustainable restaurants both support and undermine the values and goals of sustainable diets in different ways; restaurants contributed well to food safety, animal welfare and freshness, but contributed poorly to affordability, nutrition and equity issues. This research also identified a significant gap between participant values and actions, indicating that there were perceived or real barriers for them implementing sustainability initiatives in their restaurants.