Taking sustainable eating practices from niche to mainstream: the perspectives of Swedish food-provisioning actors on barriers and potentials

Abstract

The food system is a major driver of anthropogenic environmental impacts and in Sweden a sizeable proportion of the country’s relatively large per capita ecological footprint is attributable to food. In short, sustainable eating practices need to become mainstream. Actors within the food-provisioning system likely have valuable insights into how such a transition could be enabled. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that aimed to examine the perspectives of these individuals on such a transition in Sweden using a social practice framework to identify framings of barriers and potentials for mainstreaming sustainable eating practices. We found that conventional framings and models for explaining change and transitions dominate. These approaches center on providing alternative food products, with some attention devoted to normalizing sustainable eating through product design, communication, and marketing. However, exceptions to these strategies include calls for redefining business profitability in terms of human and planetary health and notions of a decentralized food-provisioning system consisting of small-scale actors and limited by the regional and seasonal supply of food. Our analysis suggests that interventions for mainstreaming sustainable eating practices need to move beyond a constrained recrafting of mainstream eating practices and toward systematic practice substitution that favors considerations regarding how eating practices connect to other practices that constitute people’s everyday lives. We conclude by discussing implications for the food-provisioning system and suggest directions for further research that could lead to the development of strategies for mainstreaming sustainable eating practices in Sweden and elsewhere.