Sustainable food comes at a cost: Who should be paying?
November 24
By the Food Culture Alliance
As health and environmental crises intensify, the need for healthy and sustainable diets has never been more urgent. Yet two major barriers persist: rising food prices and the cultural devaluation of food.
According to the FAO Food Price Index, food inflation has soared by 27.5% since the 2014 -16 baseline. For many lower-income countries (LMIC), that means more than 40% of household income is spent putting food on the table – food that’s often unhealthy and unsustainable.
What’s driving up food costs?
Climate change is a key factor. No longer a distant threat, experts predict that climate-driven inflation could push food prices up by 3.2% annually, impacting low-income communities most severely.
This isn’t a problem limited to LMICs. In the UK alone, 7.2 million adults face food insecurity, and for the poorest 20% of households, eating a healthy diet would require spending half of their disposable income on food.
How do cultural beliefs shape spending on food?
Beyond rising costs, how we spend our money is influenced by the cultural narratives surrounding us through media such as music, TV, and film. These narratives shape our identity, beliefs, and behaviours.
In the Global North, a “good lifestyle” promotes indulgence – think splashing out on a gym membership, holidays, and the latest iPhone. In the UK, for example, after covering essentials like housing, energy, and transport, average middle-income households typically have 30% of their budget for non-essential items such as dining out, gym fees, and holidays. Many in wealthier societies aspire to have the financial means to indulge in these pursuits – it has become the social norm and the social aspiration for others.
Consider the narratives in movies; the use of material things as a shorthand for success and conversely the film’s treatment of living within limited resources. There is little space in the scenes and scripts for the intrinsic values that research has demonstrated underpin wellbeing. These depictions reinforce the socio-cultural belief that money, for non-essential spending, is needed to be happy. Similarly, song lyrics frequently glorify external appearance, and lavish lifestyles filled with material possessions and exotic locations, shaping societal desires and expectations.
With finite resources, people prioritise where they spend, often devaluing items that don’t fit into a “good lifestyle” ideal. Because healthy and sustainable foods are not yet considered relevant to a good life, they are not prioritised , leading to a range of negative impacts on our wellbeing, biodiversity, ecosystems, local high streets, and communities, their economies, and resilience.
In wealthier nations like the USA, UK, and Switzerland, households typically spend less than 10% of their income on food—down from 30% historically. Governments even consider food prices an important barometer of their prospects for election, because low food costs are so deeply ingrained in the cultural value system.
In this cultural devaluation of food, there is a belief that food is cheap fuel – as such price, quantity, and convenience are top choice drivers. The food industry has responded by creating cheap, convenient, and hyper-palatable processed foods.
Processed, convenient food can be made cheap due to subsidies, reengineered recipes to reduce ingredients’ costs, and power imbalances in the food system driving incomes down for primary producers. The absence of corporate financial accountability for the externalised costs associated with poor health and environmental impact currently maintains the cost advantage over nutritious and sustainable diets.
So, what can we do about it?
To address these challenges, we need to shift how we value food. We must move toward a cultural norm that values nutritious, sustainable diets as essential, not secondary, to a ‘good lifestyle’. Eating well should be a shared aspiration, not an afterthought.
With food prices predicted to keep rising, households may soon be forced to spend more of their disposable income on food at a level at odds with current cultural expectations around the use of disposable income. We need to urgently invest efforts in shifting our cultural narratives on the value of food in wealthier nations.
As climate expert, Johan Rockström (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) warns, these rises will have to be handled with political dexterity, and support for poorer sections of society, otherwise, the result could be protests.
At the Food Culture Alliance, we’re actively exploring what influences food culture and how we can leverage it, with initiatives underway in Kenya, India, and Indonesia.
If you’d like to learn more or join us on this journey, email us at contact@foodculturealliance.org or sign up for our newsletter.
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