Sustainable and Healthy Food Consumption

Course goals

Learning objectives

1. Understand that food consumption involves both deliberate and intuitive considerations (and that behaviour change interventions need to take both into account).
2. Understand how the brain responds to a food environment to create craving, satiety and disgust (smell, sight, taste, expectations, memories). Which role hormones, (like insulin, ghrelin, leptin, and cortisol) and neurotransmitters (dopamine and serotonin) play in people´s food consumption behaviour.
3. Understand consumer's perspectives of food: what are the perceptions of healthy or sustainable food, what is the level of food literacy (i.e. are they able to make informed decisions), does this inform food preferences/behaviour and what kind of individual differences determine such perceptions?
4. Understand that food consumption has many other functions besides providing nutrition (e.g., hedonistic pleasure, signal social status, provide emotional comfort, social facilitation, express identity, etc.). Changing food consumption behaviour has therefore also implications to the other functions food play in consumers´ life.
5. Apply behavioural insights to explain societal phenomena such as, household food waste, malnutrition in nursing homes, the rise (and fall) of food trends, obesity in neighbourhoods of low social economic status, meat consumption and differentiate between effective and ineffective marketing/nudging.

Content

Food choices have a large impact on peoples’ health, the welfare of animals, stakeholders in the food system and ultimately the planet. This course will focus on food environments and the consumer, to understand the factors that lead to unhealthy and unsustainable choices and how these can be shifted.
In this course we will explore a wide range of disciplines and topics, from brain processes and gut bacteria (biology and nutrition science), to decision making processes (psychology), to cultural processes (sociology), to the food environment (marketing and human geography) and finally behaviour change interventions (Communication and psychology). We will go on an excursion to get some hands-on experience and we will hear from various guest lecturers how they contribute to resolving the issues in the food system. We will not only discuss societal issues such as obesity, malnutrition, food waste, microplastics, the protein transition and diet hypes, but also take ourselves as study object. We will get to know the research methods with which food science is conducted in order to take part in meaningful discussions about sustainable and healthy food consumption.

Learning activities

• Go-along interviews to make understand how a consumers' knowledge of health or sustainability influences their experienced responsibility about the (health and environmental) consequences of their food choices. This understanding will then show which features (besides, health and sustainability) are relevant to consumers (and which are thus important to consider when developing campaigns promoting healthy or sustainable food).
• Excursions to Foodbank in Utrecht, Rotterzwam or a wildpicking fieldtrip.
• Guest lectures from scholars in the field of Human Geography, Pharmacy, and academic professionals from sustainable food start-ups (e.g. Merquato) and influential companies (e.g. rabobank)

Evaluation

• 1. Footprint calculator assignment [individual assignment - graded]
  2. Two go-along interview transcripts [individual assignment – pass/fail]
  3. Group report based on go-along interviews [group assignment - graded]
  4. Myth-busting pitch [assignment in pairs -graded]
• 5. Multiple choice exam.

Methods

• Students will learn how to carry out go-along interviews.
• Students will learn how to interpret life cycle analysis research
• They will learn qualitative text analysis using closed and open coding
• Students will learn how to process and analyse qualitative data and combine it with quantitative data such as health outcomes of particular diets.
• Students will learn debating skills