Price determines food choices
Easily understandable information about the impacts of foodstuffs is needed for environmental arguments to achieve greater influence when food service providers choose amongst products. This has been revealed by an earlier Idea Support project.
Food service providers serve millions of meals daily and are therefore important for determining the environmental impact of the wholesale foods sector. The Idea Support project Designing and evaluating the impacts of environmental information in food service institutions and the wholesale sector evaluated the extent to which buyers that procure foodstuffs in the food service industry are influenced by environmental information when choosing amongst products. “The purpose was to study the importance of environmental information in influencing food service providers to choose environmentally-friendly products. There were already a number of similar studies about normal consumers´ use and valuing of environmental information about different food products, but there was nothing that targeted wholesalers and food service providers. So much of the research that we were performing was new," says Annika Carlsson Kanyama, the project leader and now Research Director at the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI). Most important factor
The researchers concluded that price is the most important factor determining which products food service institutions purchase. In addition, purchasers felt that the environmental information available was difficult to understand; a conclusion that has led to a review within the wholesale food industry of how environmental information should be framed. “The most striking conclusion we made was that environmental information had very little influence on choices between products at the time the study was performed. But one can wonder if we would find the same result today, when awareness of climate change is so much greater," says Kanyama.
Local products — not always the best choice
The researchers also performed a number of simplified lifecycle analyses focused on the environmental impact of production and transportation of some common produce items, such as tomatoes, carrots and broccoli. Produce grown in Sweden, France and Guatemala was compared. A surprising result was that broccoli produced in Guatemala didn´t have a greater environmental impact than broccoli produced in Sweden. “But broccoli is produced almost entirely by hand in Guatemala, which in this case compensates for the emissions from the long-distance transportation. Globalization puts us in contact with low-mechanized production, which has a low impact on the climate and the environment. It is difficult, therefore, to generalize and say that locally-produced food is always better. Food products that are transported great distances can be better from an environmental perspective despite the impacts of transportation," says Annika Carlsson Kanyama. But the result is difficult to communicate, because consumers expect locally-grown produce to automatically be better for the environment than imported produce.
New ideas tested
The project was carried out from 2002 through 2005, and involved natural scientists and household experts as well as psychologists. From a research perspective, the results have meant a lot and have been put to use in additional studies. “We have also participated in the popular science discussion that has taken place on food and climate change, and have provided knowledge to the Swedish National Food Administration, which has been given the task of mainstreaming environmental concerns into its nutritional advice," says Kanyama.
The Idea Support project also allowed the researchers to work in an entirely new constellation, and to test new ideas. “It was not entirely easy to obtain financing for this type of project when there was no previous research to lean on. Often, research is about improving existing results, so in that sense the Idea Support was unique," says Annika Carlsson Kanyama.
