Abstract
The consumption of food products in the contemporary consumerist economy is associated with broad environmental effects. Consumption behavior and food choices predetermine the sustainability of food production and its long-term impact on the environment, as well as human health in the long-term perspective. One of the ways to influence human behavior in choosing food products and their mindful environment-friendly consumption is food labeling, which implies the provision of information pertaining to sustainable consumption. Therefore, food labeling plays a pivotal role in shaping consumers’ food choices, which ultimately determine the environmental outcomes at large. This literature review was conducted to identify evidence on the effective ways how food labeling practices might improve consumers’ sustainable food choices. The review of five credible, recently published scholarly articles indicated that sustainability labeling might be an effective measure to promote sustainable food consumption under several conditions. These conditions include appealing design, price, taste, quality, and footprint information.
Introduction
Food production and consumption have both long- and short-term effects on the environment. These effects are three-fold, namely food production-related hazards, food waste concerns, and healthy food choices for a longer lifespan and healthier existence are the factors predetermining sustainability outcomes (Gröfke et al., 2021; Huang et al., 2021). Therefore, multiple stakeholders, from producers to consumers, are involved in the processes affecting the environment and humanity through food products. However, in economic terms, demand triggers offer consumers food choices that are capable of changing the industry patterns by minimizing the purchasing of environmentally hazardous products and shifting to more sustainable food choices. Overall, sustainable food choices are a driving force of long-term environment-friendly development of the food industry in the contemporary consumerist society, where excessive product purchasing has become a global concern.
The research on the effects of food production on the environment is sufficient to generate effective educational and sustainability-promotional information for consumers. One of the most persuasive ways to influence consumers is by promoting food labeling. It is assumed that by perceiving information through food labels, people will make more informed food choices by the continuous reminder of the impact of their behavior on their health and the environment. However, it is important to identify whether food labeling can affect consumers’ food choices and how this can be achieved. Therefore, a review of scholarly literature is necessary to explore the contemporary approaches and analyze available evidence on the topic to answer the research question of how food labeling can affect sustainable food choices.
The reason why this field has been chosen for exploration is the overall relevance of the topic to the modern discourse on sustainability. Furthermore, the lack of extensive research on sustainability food labeling and its effects on consumers’ behavior and purchasing choices motivates the researcher to collect and examine available scholarly literature (Piester et al., 2020). The proposed literature review will provide an opportunity to attract academia’s and the public’s attention to the concerns related to food consumption and environmental outcomes. Encouraging research in this area will enable decision-makers and stakeholders to generate effective measures for informing customers of sustainable outcomes of their food choices, as well as find ways to influence more sustainable consumption and purchasing behavior. In such a manner, the current literature review is an attempt to raise awareness about the sustainability issues in the food sector as they apply to the general public at large.
Methodology
The choice of the scholarly articles included in this literature review was based on the accuracy of the studies’ topics in accordance with the investigated issue, their credibility, recent time of publication, and accessibility. The search of the literature was conducted online by referring to credible scholarly databases. The search was performed using the keywords such as sustainability food labeling, sustainable food choices, food labeling, and food labeling affecting consumers’ purchasing behavior. Among the obtained results, only the articles, the titles of which matched the investigated topic, were selected. At the next stage of saturation, the articles published within the past three years were maintained for examination. After reading the abstracts of the most relevant studies, those with the highest level of the perceived match were read in full. Since the minimum required number of articles for this literature review was five, only five of the identified studies were chosen on the basis of the above-mentioned inclusion criteria. One should state that only articles published in the English language were included.
Discussion
The selected studies were reviewed to identify the patterns in contemporary research on the topic of food labeling and its impact on consumers’ sustainable food choices. As the result of the review, such themes as food labeling and its connection with sustainability issues, environment-related food concerns, and health-related food choices in the context of sustainability have been distinguished. The discussion of each of these themes will allow for answering the research question and establishing the ways in which consumers’ sustainable decision-making with food choices might be encouraged.
Food Labeling and Sustainability
A food product label is the primary source of information that a consumer obtains about a particular item. As stated by Kaczorowska et al. (2019), “sustainable food labeling is a tool originated from the need to raise consumer awareness [to alter] consumption patterns to benefit the environment and ensure positive economic, society and health outcomes” (p. 1). Since, in general, labeling is a way for companies to promote sales by altering the designs, the essential information that must be contained in a label remains. Research shows that consumers are most commonly interested in such information pieces as “designation of origin, … the organic logo, … the nutritional panel and warnings, … the expiry date, … and the price” (Corallo et al., 2021, p. 8). Furthermore, among other factors, the participants in Corallo et al.’s (2021) study reported concern with the quality of food, its healthiness, and the overall impact of food choices. These findings suggest that labeling is an effective way of reaching customers’ attention and influencing their food choices in general, which implies the possibility of encouraging sustainable food choices through labels.
Moreover, the relationship between food consumption and sustainability concerns requires discussion in order to explain the dependence between these issues. Overall, the literature indicated that the European Union’s (EU) strategy regarding food is pivoted toward sustainability. In particular, the EU “leverages its “from farm to fork” action in order to ensure a fair economic return in the supply chain and ensure that Europeans have access to healthy, affordable, and sustainable food” (Corallo et al., 2021, p. 2). Thus sustainability concerns are related to food production, consumption, and human health. Indeed, among the multiple food functions apart from solving starvation, research has recently addressed environmental pollution, nutrition intake, and greenhouse gas emissions caused by food (Huang et al., 2021). Both the production of meat and agricultural products have adverse effects on the environment through pollution and climate change (Huang et al., 2021; Piester et al., 2020).
The second concern after production-related environmental hazards is food waste as the outcome of non-sustainable consumption. Consumers’ behavior manifested through purchasing excessive amounts of food that are wasted is considered non-sustainable since they jeopardize the reliability of demand indicators causing overproducing of food alongside the environmental pollution (Kaczorowska et al., 2019). The third concern is human health as the outcome of nutrition. Proper food consumption practices and the choice of nutritious food items contribute to individual and public health, which is essential to the sustainable development of humanity (Huang et al., 2021, p. 1). Thus, food choices constitute a substantial part of sustainability practices, which is why they should be altered through consumer education.
Indeed, as claimed by Piester et al. (2020), “many people are unaware of the relationship between food and sustainability;” thus, they need to be educated by such affordable and comprehensive means as labeling. Several approaches to generating educational labeling on sustainability for food products have been detected by Piester et al. (2020) to create their label for the study conducted at the university café. The results of the study indicated that labeling had the potential to shift consumer food choices, although other factors such as taste play an important role when highlighting the benefits of sustainable products (Piester et al., 2020). Similarly, the design of food labels that would be informative, compelling, and persuasive was addressed by Corallo et al. (2021). Thus, labeling that contains sustainability-related information is capable of influencing buyers’ decisions given the creative approaches to design.
Environment-Related Food Choices
The review of the literature on the topic indicated that labeling is an effective way of influencing consumers’ food choices, given design and message compelling and persuasive attributes. However, it is relevant to explore how can food-related behavior changes in consumers further enable sustainable changes in the environment. For that matter, one should consider the array of adverse environmental impacts both production and consumption of food generate and how they can be reduced through sustainable food choices.
All of the reviewed articles presented evidence of the negative environmental degradation effect of food. In particular, as stated by Huang et al. (2020), greenhouse gas “emissions from agricultural production account for 30% of the whole anthropogenic emissions” (p. 1). Moreover, according to Piester et al. (2020), “the depletion of freshwater resources, the release of reactive nitrogen through the manufacturing and use of fertilizers, greenhouse gas emissions, decreasing fertility of land and soil, and chemical pollution” are caused by food production (p. 1). With the extensive and rapid population growth on the planet, food consumption and production growth, threaten environmental safety (Gröfke et al., 2021). Furthermore, since it has been proven that “approximately one-third of a person’s environmental footprint is caused by his or her diet,” changing food choices through labeling will have significant improvements in eliminating human-induced environmental threats (Gröfke et al., 2021, p. 1). Similarly, food consumption is related to health outcomes, which constitute sustainability concerns.
Health-Related Food Choices in the Context of Sustainability
A healthy diet is a foundation of longevity and good health. Human life and its quality have a direct connection with sustainability since the prolonged well-being of both nature and the human population is a pivotal environmental issue. Thus, through food labeling, people’s health-related food choices might be influenced by disseminating nutritious and sustainability-related information. However, as the studies demonstrate, even with concerns about health and sustainability, people are more concerned with the reliability of a brand and the price of a food item than with sustainability (Kaczorowska et al., 2019). Therefore, in addition to taste indicators and design appeal, sustainability food labeling should contain price validation information and brand quality information to be more persuasive in changing customers’ decision-making toward sustainable food choices.
Conclusion
In summation, the conducted literature review was aimed at answering the question of how food labeling practices might improve consumers’ sustainable food choices. It was identified that food consumption and production have significant adverse effects on the environment in terms of pollution, greenhouse gas emission, climate change, exhaustible resource waste, and other negative outcomes. The analysis of the findings of five recently published studies allowed for identifying the themes of the relationship between food and sustainability, food labeling effectiveness, environmental outcomes of sustainable food consumption, and health-related effects of food. Overall, the review found that for food labeling to be effective in reaching customers, educating them, and ultimately shaping their sustainable food choices, labels should contain several characteristics. In particular, appealing and attractive design, and information related to taste, price, footprint, and nutrition are the factors that are likely to facilitate people’s favorable perception of sustainable food labels.
References
Corallo, A., Latino, M.E., Menegoli, M. and Pizzi, R. (2021) ‘Assuring effectiveness in consumer-oriented traceability; suggestions for food label design’, Agronomy, 11(4), pp.1-17.
Gröfke, N., Duplat, V., Wickert, C. and Tjemkes, B. (2021) ‘A multi-stakeholder perspective on food labelling for environmental sustainability: attitudes, perceived barriers, and solution approaches towards the “traffic light index”’, Sustainability, 13(2), pp.1-23.
Huang, Y., Yang, X., Li, X. and Chen, Q. (2021) ‘Less is better: how nutrition and low-carbon labels jointly backfire on the evaluation of food products’, Nutrients, 13(4), pp.1-25.
Kaczorowska, J., Rejman, K., Halicka, E., Szczebyło, A. and Gorska-Warsewicz, H. (2019) ‘Impact of food sustainability labels on the perceived product value and price expectations of urban consumers’, Sustainability, 11(24), pp.1-17.
Piester, H.E., DeRieux, C.M., Tucker, J., Buttrick, N.R., Galloway, J.N. and Wilson, T.D. (2020) ‘“I’ll try the veggie burger”: increasing purchases of sustainable foods with information about sustainability and taste’, Appetite, 155, pp.1-9.