We live in a world shaped by the spaces around us that are influenced by private companies and also the public sector. Food is a major part of this. Think of the places we buy our food. But there is a wider network of influences on us at play, and these come together to be known by experts as our food environments. According to researchers (Swinburn et al., 2013), food environments are ‘the collective physical, economic, policy and sociocultural surroundings, opportunities and conditions that influence people’s food and beverage choices and nutritional status.’
Food environments are the silent hand in the food system, and they’re composed of all those moving parts that crosscut business, society, and central and local government. The impacts on the food environment are many and varied. They include:
- what food is made of (its composition);
- the labelling on the packet you buy;
- the exposure and power of health promotion or health education (usually from governments);
- the nutritional quality of foods in different places;
- the availability of healthy or unhealthy foods in retail;
- the price and affordability of healthy or unhealthy options; and
- the impacts of bigger macro issues like trade and investments in food.
The idea is that people live in a complex world surrounded by invisible forces that are influencing food choices. You might think you’re making a ‘choice’ when you reach for that packet of biscuits on special, but there are many different things that are influencing that for you. The result of these largely unregulated environments from a public health perspective (not all the other health and safety or legal requirements) is that people end up not making the ‘healthy’ choice, at all. Instead, the food environments in which we live are geared towards people becoming obese and unhealthy.
I spoke with Professor Boyd Swinburn, who’s spent his career researching and studying this, and who was a lead author on the study that coined the phrase ‘Global Syndemic’ to sum up the big three: climate change, obesity and undernutrition. He also coined the phrase ‘obesogenic’ – i.e. ‘tending to cause obesity’ – to describe our current food environments. Boyd believes things will only change when we completely redesign the food system; I happen to agree.
Boyd explains that, currently, the food system has two (inherent) goals: to feed people (it doesn’t matter what) who can afford to eat; and to make money. To change this – to include environmental wellbeing, human wellbeing, improving equity and building prosperity – we need to look deep into the system and its drivers and come up with a new purpose and a redesign. He says a complete food system transformation that comes up with economically sustainable options and outcomes is the only way we are going to get ourselves out of this unhealthy situation. He’s come at this issue from many different angles over the years and now sees the only way out of the mess we’re in is to stop and rethink what we are doing. No mean feat.
There is no lack of recommendations, science, reports and suggestions from experts on how to change our food environments, our marketing to children, the price of our sugar sweetened foods and vegetables. The WHO and many other agencies and experts, for example, recommend introducing a tax on sugar sweetened beverages, which includes soft drinks, fruit drinks and energy drinks that are associated with weight gain.
What we have is a wealth of knowledge, Boyd explains, but policy inertia due to commercial opposition and the political aversion to making unpopular choices. Big food is powerful and loud, and they hold a lot of weight in this conversation around the world. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand our top exports of concentrated milk, sheep and goat milk, butter and frozen beef contribute around $13 billion to our GDP. And, of course, we import the majority of the unhealthy foods or the ingredients to make them. Therefore, there’s reluctance to regulate and tax behaviours. This means we need bold leadership from people in both the food industry and also the Government to change these practices.
Reframing our food environments
Changing the food landscape is also about reframing the terms we’ve borrowed or adopted. Researchers have been looking at how we can reframe food deserts and food swamps for Pasifika and Māori communities and lead with positive spaces for people to access healthy and culturally appropriate food. We introduced these concepts in the discussion around the complexities of access to food. Researchers are looking into what that means for communities in South Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau, an area that has many Pasifika and Māori communities and also the presence of food swamps, obesogenic food environments, unhealthy people with food poverty, malnutrition and obesity. But it’s not all bad there, at all. Communities in South Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau also have these pockets of joy where amazing things are unfolding. The Southern Initiative project like the Papatoetoe Food Hub, or the community-led Papatūānuku Kōkiri Marae, are just two examples of reclaiming the food environment for good that are happening in our Pasifika and Māori urban communities, and there are more around the country.
Papatūānuku Kōkiri Marae has a plethora of community-based food initiatives, like growing phenomenal food in the māra for families, sold in the CSA vege boxes and at farmers’ markets, working with the fish industry to get fish heads that would’ve otherwise been wasted and redistribute them to people to cook and eat, and running an epic worm farm, just to name a few. Incidentally, it’s guided by the Hua Parakore framework, which adds another layer to its operations. It’s an example of this framework working for Māori by Māori.
Places like this led researchers to explore instead the concept of food havens, where there are good things growing in the food system. Common Unity, for example, would be a food haven. As would the māra kai at my local marae, Piritahi, which grows produce to feed families in need in our community. Imagine a time when our cities are alive with food havens. I like to picture them as glowing beacons lighting up a city map. Places where people can connect and make sure they are feeling fed, supported, healthy and accepted in their own community and cultures.
Don’t be fooled
Overconsumption is, actually, overselling by big food businesses – and the food system in its current state is duping you. Most people reading this book will have access to food and may not identify with some of the insights in this chapter. Most can afford to feed their kids, after all, albeit on a budget. And you think you eat pretty well, with the occasional treat. I call you duped because, like marketing, the food environments we fall into are made for us (like a trap) and we don’t even realise it.
The classic example is the layout of the supermarket: first the delightful colours of the fresh produce (make you feel aligned with nature and relaxed) and the wafts of warm bread pumped out the bakery (for an early impression of freshness), then the butchery and deli (also fresh, but more selective), then aisles of wants (sodas, confectionary, snacks) followed by needs – then the final punchline of impulse buys at the checkouts. The more subtle tools are the billboards on every corner store for refined sugar sweetened beverages and snacks. The louder ones are on TV advertising ‘specials’, which we now know are confusing and not really ‘special’ at all. The food court at the mall is another. The corner dairy (store) opposite the school. There are so many places and spaces that influence food and how we purchase it, what we purchase, what we think is good for us but may not be.
I recommend here to turn your food system radar on and be critical of what is around you, what you’re exposing yourself to, and what tools and tricks might be in play. That can be online or in real spaces. Deconstructing what’s happening in the food environments, and thinking critically about how you buy and eat food, is a great start for this, because marketing is working wonders at tricking you into buying half the supermarket when you and your bank account don’t need it. Do you need those vegan nuggets, or should you instead just be eating more vegetables? Questioning why things are the way they are and creatively sourcing products for yourself (in a co-op, online, or growing and making things yourself) are ways to work around this dominant system. Finding solutions on the margins of the food system is a very satisfying experience. I find that working around the dominant system to feed yourself and your family is a liberating way of reasserting your rights as a citizen to food. This might be growing your own food where you can, joining a Crop Swap, buying in bulk from suppliers, changing what you choose to eat, and ignoring multiple aisles in the supermarket.
Someone told me once that if you want to find the good products at the supermarket, you need to crawl around on the floor backwards, because the healthy and niche stuff never makes it to the main rows. There’s a reason for this: the planogram of the supermarket sells retail in the form of shelf space to the big companies with the reliable sales. It really is real estate for food. That’s why certain soft drink companies have entire aisles to themselves; they serve no nutritional or human health benefit, and there is no way we need that much sugar sweetened beverage consumed as a nation. But it’s what makes the supermarket revenue, and, in turn, the big beverage companies’ profit, which is in turn invested in marketing, and the circle of consumption continues. You can actually buy the foods you need at the supermarket by skipping a number of aisles or shop online with a pre-order of foods (if you can ignore the online advertising that comes at you while you do this) to stop you being influenced by the food environment.
Extract from Re-food: Exploring the troubled food system of Aotearoa New Zealand by Emily King $45.00 RRP, (Mary Egan Publishing) out now. See www.spira.nz for more information on Emily’s work.
