Shrinking the food-print: Understanding consumers to promote healthy and environmentally friendly food behaviours

Globally there is increased recognition of the importance for multilevel policy responses to address healthy and environmentally friendly food behaviours. However it is not yet clear which policies may support consumers to adopt them. In order to prepare for a nation-wide survey, we performed 15 online in-depth interviews. The objectives were to explore consumer beliefs and behaviours along with identification of enablers and barriers to perform the four key food-related behaviours of eating animal and plant products, processed foods, overeating, and food waste. Results show knowledge and awareness about environmental aspects were generally low – primarily referring to packaging and ‘chemicals’ in foods. Further, consumers thought the combination of healthy and environmentally friendly foods was plausible, although health was clearly a stronger driver in food choice. We therefore recommend health should be used as the guiding principle for policies, as this has greater potential to support behaviour change.