Summary Eating with impact Essay on experiencing as the key to a sustainable food culture Beek, M. van (M’Pure) InnovationNetwork Report No. 11.2.277, Utrecht, The Netherlands, October 2011. This essay is a plea for the society-wide development of a sustainable food culture. Such a food culture is conceivable and achievable. The tide can be turned in a single generation. This essay’s point of departure is the current path we are following towards promoting more sustainable food, as described in the ‘Sustainable Food’ policy paper written in 2009 on behalf of Ms Verburg, the then Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. The policy paper sets extremely high ambitions: to secure a position as a global leader in sustainable food. This essay argues that this ambition is not realistic without serious breakthroughs at consumer level. The most important reason why the aforementioned ambition will not be achieved is that consumers have virtually no connection with nature and their food. The fact that a growing proportion of the adult population is overweight and almost addicted to certain types of food is only serving to widen this gap even further. This essay responds to this wider and deeper problem by providing an in-depth description of a new path. This path is aimed at the development of a sustainable food culture. The key here lies in the – still historically low – value and significance that is attached to food. Food could, for instance, play a crucial role in the shift from curative to preventive care, a shift which, even for cost reasons alone, is absolutely necessary. Given that food is already one of the Dutch economy’s strengths and that the government has actually designated agrifood and horticulture as two of the nine top sectors (and not pharmaceuticals), there is a magnificent opportunity here to kill two birds with one stone. The food sector, and particularly the primary sector, could in due course double volumes and margins, whilst simultaneously halving costs in the healthcare sector. So a sustainable food culture starts with developing a healthy food culture. In fact, these two are largely synonymous, so the Health Council concluded in its recent advice to the government (June 2011). This essay contains a plea to centre our efforts entirely on the consumer’s conscious food experiences in order to achieve long-term behaviour change. If we, in the Netherlands, want to lead the world we can learn a lot from the large leading group of sustainable Dutch consumers who already eat consciously and responsibly, many of whom have had meaningful inner experiences of the benefits for mind and spirit as well as body. The big challenge is to strongly expand this leading group of consumers and bring it to a point of no return, Summary 31 Pagina 30
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