One of the most effective ways to reduce the environmental impact of diets, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, is to cut back on animal protein. Ruminant meat, like beef and lamb, has the largest footprint.
And yet evidence from a five-country study showed that young people struggle to define sustainable diets as ones with reduced livestock consumption.
“[…] defining ‘sustainable eating’ was challenging for participants across all countries,” the authors wrote. “While participants’ values regarding sustainable diets were often context-specific with marked differences across countries, common themes across countries included concern about food waste and packaging and the belief that sustainability should be the responsibility of all actors across the food system, not just the individual.”
The study, pubished in the Journal of Planetary Health, explored perceptions of sustainable diets across five high- and middle-income countries: Japan, Indonesia, Italy, Canada, and Mexico. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 184 young adults (30 to 45 per country), with transcripts analysed to understand the values, attitudes, and beliefs that shape behaviours related to sustainable diets.
Food waste is recognised as a major issue, as is excessive packaging. Cost is also cited as a major barrier. “Given that many sustainable, plant-based options are actually cheaper than equivalent animal proteins, this likely reflects perceptions of value rather than actual price,” said Sophie Attwood, a behavioural scientist who was not involved in the study.
Attwood said the findings suggest the message on reducing livestocvk consumption “is still not getting through to younger people. When asked what a sustainablediet means, eating locally dominates their thinking, despite having a relatively smaller overall impact on sustainability,” she explained.
A sustainable eating behaviour that did emerge was reducing intake of processed or highly processed foods. Respondents across all countries discussed how reducing their intake of these foods was important for their own health, as it would help them to reduce their intake of “chemicals” as well as sugar or fat. “Respondents also identified that reducing the intake of processed foods was important for the environment due to the high inputs needed to process and transport these foods,” the authors wrote.
The findings also suggest that terms such as ‘environmentally sustainable eating’ or ‘environmentally friendly eating’ may be better understood by young adult consumers than ‘sustainable diet’ or ‘sustainable eating’.
