Proyecto El malestar con la alimentación: percepciones actitudes y conductas de la población española hacia una alimentación saludable, sostenible y justa.

Proyecto El malestar con la alimentación: percepciones actitudes y conductas de la población española hacia una alimentación saludable, sostenible y justa.

National R&D&I Plan (2022-2025) Knowledge generation project 2021 Reference PID2021-122721OB-C21

Participants: University of Oviedo, University of Granada, UNED, Complutense University of Madrid.

ABSTRACT

For several decades, social studies have been identifying multiple signs of citizens’ malaise with food. Some of them, with an objective character, have to do with the nature of the industrial production and marketing of food. Others, with a subjective dimension, are related to social perceptions and attitudes towards food. These studies highlight dissatisfaction with food or with a food system (FS) that does not fully meet the expectations of the actors. Behind the discontent and malaise lies a food ideal that the current FS fails to deal with. The promotion of healthy, sustainable and fair food is a clear institutional objective. It is a normative benchmark of what food “should be”, in terms of consumption, production, distribution and industry. However, evidence shows that the concept of healthy and sustainable food is not uniform among citizens. The food ideal needs to be made tangible as it is the basis of ideas about the FS. It is also a motivator for the development of responses to this malaise as well as action strategies to promote the transition towards healthy, sustainable and just food systems.

Based on our extensive experience as specialists in this field of study, this coordinated project is based on a general hypothesis which can be expressed as follows: in Spanish society there is a food malaise as the current food system does not respond to the food ideal of citizens, and this malaise hinders the transition towards healthy, sustainable and fair food.