A new study has given new insights into people's understanding of the environmental impact of the food they eat and shown that they often misperceive it, supporting the need for environmental impact labelling.
Scientists from the University of Nottingham's School of Psychology conducted a food categorisation task in which 168 UK participants organised a diverse range of supermarket food products into environmental impact categories that they created and labelled themselves. The results showed there are a number of misconceptions around the environmental impact of food. The results have been published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
Food systems are a major contributor to environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss. To promote dietary shifts among the public it is crucial to understand how people perceive the environmental impact of food products.
The environmental impact of food is calculated through a life cycle assessment, which evaluates the entire "cradle-to-grave" process from raw material extraction to disposal. It involves collecting data on a product's inputs (like fertilizer, water, and energy) and outputs (like emissions and waste), then assessing impacts across multiple categories such as greenhouse gas emissions (often as CO2 equivalents), land use, and water use.
Prior investigations into this topic have covered only a narrow range of product types. This study, which was funded by the UKRI's Smart Data Research UK, is the first to examine perceptions of a wide range of food products that might be purchased during a typical food shop.
The participants in this study were shown product-level scientific impact estimates and reported whether they were surprised by how high or low each impact was.
Daniel Fletcher, Postdoctoral researcher from the School of Psychology is lead author on the study, he said: "We designed an online task to engage people with the topic and provide an interactive and visual way of investigating their understanding of the environmental impact of food. We found participants would be willing to change their purchasing behaviour based on this task, reporting intentions to decrease (or increase) their future consumption of products for which they were surprised by how high (or low) the scientifically estimated environmental impact was.
Our findings also suggest people may struggle to compare the environmental impact of animal-based products and highly processed foods because they see their effects as too different to weigh against each other. Environmental impact labels that give foods a single overall grade (such as A-E) could help make these comparisons easier for consumers.
The environmental impact data on food products is opening up new avenues for this research and this is the first study to look at this against a wide range of everyday products and examine what people's perceptions of these are. What was clear from the study is that there are a lot of misconceptions around this which really supports the need for environmental impact labelling which would help people to be more informed to make sustainable food choices.
