Anglais

Articles

• Recycling, recovering and preventing “food waste” : competing solutions for food systems sustainability in the United States and France
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Drawing on a distinction between “weak” and “strong” sustainability, this paper argues that “strong” prevention based on holistic changes in the food system is the most sustainable solution to food surplus and waste. It suggests that academics focus on strong food surplus prevention, but also that advocates encourage government and corporate actors to differentiate between weak and strong actions to diffuse strong sustainability across organizations and countries.

• The practice and politics of food system localization
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  As an apparent counterpoint to globalization, food system localization is often assumed to be a good, progressive and desirable process. Such thinking rests on a local–global binary that merits closer scrutiny. This paper examines the social construction of “local”, by analyzing the practice and politics of food system localization efforts in Iowa, USA. It argues that desirable social or environmental outcomes may not always map neatly onto the spatial content of “local”, which itself involves the social construction of scale. These contradictions in turn relate to differing political inflections discernible in food system localization. Localization can be approached defensively, emphasizing the boundaries and distinctions between a culturally and socially homogeneous locality needing protection from non-local “others”. But through the experience of new social and gustatory exchanges, localization can also promote increased receptivity to difference and diversity. More emergent, fluid and inclusive notions of the “local”, however, may challenge the very project of crafting and maintaining distinctive food identities for local places. These themes are explored through a case study of food system localization efforts and activities in Iowa, an American state that has been a stronghold of conventional commodity agriculture. Demographic and agricultural histories are drawn on to understand recent food system localization practice that has come to emphasize a definition of “local” that coincides with sub-national state boundaries. The emergence and popularization of the “Iowa-grown banquet meal” and the shifting meaning of “local Iowa food” further illustrate the potential tension between defensiveness and diversity in food system localization.

• Food choices at the intersections of race, class and gender struggles in post-apartheid South Africa.
  22 décembre 2017, par Roxane

  Yanga Zembe is an associate professor in the Institute for Social Development, at the University of the Western Cape. She is a behavioural social scientist, whose research explores the role of structural factors such as gender and economic inequalities in the production of social and sexual behaviours that lead to negative health outcomes.

• Improving the effectiveness of nutritional information policies : assessment of unconscious pleasure mechanisms involved in food-choice decisions
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The rise in obesity in many countries has led to the emergence of nutritional information policies that aim to change people’s diets. Changing an individual’s diet is an ambitious goal, since numerous factors influence a person’s food-choice decisions, many of which are made unconsciously. These frequently subconscious processes should not be underestimated in food-choice behavior, as they play a major role in food diet composition. In this review, research in cognitive experimental psychology and neuroscience provides the basis for a critical analysis of the role of pleasure in eating behaviors. An assessment of the main characteristics of nutritional policies is provided, followed by recent findings showing that food choices are guided primarily by automatic emotional processes. Neuroimaging and behavioral studies, which provide new insights into the relationships between emotions and food both in lean persons and in persons with eating disorders, are reported as well. Lastly, the argument is presented that future nutritional policies can be more effective if they associate healthy food with eating pleasure.

• Comparison of sociodemographic and nutritional characteristics between self-reported vegetarians, vegans, and meat-eaters from the NutriNet-Santé study
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  There is a growing trend for vegetarian and vegan diets in many Western countries. Epidemiological evidence suggesting that such diets may help in maintaining good health is rising. However, dietary and sociodemographic characteristics of vegetarians and vegans are not well known. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to describe sociodemographic and nutritional characteristics of self-reported, adult vegetarians and vegans, compared to meat-eaters, from the French NutriNet-Santé study.

• 18/ The social stratification of sustainable food practices
  4 July 2022, by Mathilde COUDRAY

  – Carla Altenburger, L’Institut Agro Montpellier, UMR Innovation and UMR IRISSO, Paris, France
  Key points Looking at sustainable food practices, understood here as the purchase of products labelled as “organic” or “fair trade” or that refer to a geographical origin, the French population can be split into consumers and non-consumers of such products. All the consumers surveyed fit one of four typical profiles, the comparison of which shows that sustainable food practices are strongly (…)

• Food environments and EU Food Policy
  28 June 2022, by Mathilde COUDRAY

  The aim of this policy brief is to further sharpen understanding about food environments and what a ‘food environment approach’ entails for EU food policy and the transition to sustainable food systems.

• Small farm production and the standardization of tropical products
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  This paper explores the historical relations between labour organization and product qualification in the production of tropical agricultural exports. In supplying international markets for tropical products, peasant farming emerged as the norm for labour organization after the First World War, competing with the large plantations and different systems of forced labour. During the same period, national standards became the dominant tool for product qualification of commodities traded on the global agricultural markets. These standards allow the creation of futures markets and the emergence of traders, instead of auction markets and commission merchants : two changes that were the basis of the subsequent international marketing of peasant-produced commodities. The last part of the paper considers the potential consequences of the current erosion of standards for the position of peasants in tropical export crop cultivation.

• Avoiding the local trap : scale and food systems in planning research
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  A strong current of food-systems research holds that local food systems are preferable to systems at larger scales. Many assume that eating local food is more ecologically sustainable and socially just. We term this the local trap and argue strongly against it. We draw on current scale theory in political and economic geography to argue that local food systems are no more likely to be sustainable or just than systems at other scales. The theory argues that scale is socially produced : scales (and their interrelations) are not independent entities with inherent qualities but strategies pursued by social actors with a particular agenda. It is the content of that agenda, not the scales themselves, that produces outcomes such as sustainability or justice. As planners move increasingly into food-systems research, we argue it is critical to avoid the local trap. The article’s theoretical approach to scale offers one way to do so.

• 20/ Does weight status increase vulnerability to the food environment?
  16 September 2022, by Mathilde COUDRAY

  – Marine Mas, UMR CSGA, INRAE, Dijon, France Stéphanie Chambaron, UMR CSGA, INRAE, Dijon, France Marie-Claude Brindisi, CHU Bourgogne, Dijon, France
  Key points All individuals tend to “go towards” food automatically, especially food that is energy-dense. This potentially explains the obesogenic effect of the Western food environment. Some individuals have a cognitive vulnerability to the food environment. This vulnerability is driven by more than conscious factors, and challenges the “lack (…)