Searching for the Moveable Middle
For the Center for a Livable Future (CLF) researchers who presented at the 7th Annual Johns Hopkins Sustainability Symposium, understanding Americans’ priorities is a key piece of their research. In their recent public opinion polling and surveys, one of the priorities that emerged was that price matters above all, and that personal health is also a compelling motivator.
Moderated by senior program officer Liz Nussbaumer, the panel, titled “Exploring Americans’ Perceptions of the Food System,” featured three CLF researchers who shared insights from their research.
CLF policy director Patti Truant Anderson framed the importance of polling and surveys as a quest to understand what consumers do and why they do it—in other words, consumer perceptions and behaviors. The goal of her team’s polls and surveys is to give insights into how to frame issues around meat production and consumption so they resonate with people.
“We’re looking for the moveable middle ground,” said Anderson.
In her polling around food animal production, she’s found that cost is the number one mover of behavior, with taste and health or nutrition following. Recent polling also revealed that 61 percent of Americans see eating meat as an important part of their daily life.
Environmental concerns and animal welfare are among the least concerning issues for consumers who purchase meat, according to polls. One possible lever, said Anderson, is the food safety angle. Americans want safe food, and this concern is almost as high a voter priority as health care.
CLF’s senior program officer Becky Ramsing shared lessons and insights learned from polling with regard to effecting a shift away from meat consumption toward legume consumption. Environmental and planetary concerns make a transition away from meat, which has a high greenhouse gas footprint, toward legumes seem urgent; health impacts of a high-meat diet also make the behavior change important.
“Americans do not meet nutrition recommendations,” Ramsing said. “We under-consume legumes. We need to swap.”
The “swap” in question is legumes for meat. But according to surveys, 80 percent of Americans consider themselves frequent meat eaters.
And even though Americans are devoted to meat, the surveys say that Americans are cutting back, or at least say they’re interested in cutting back, primarily for health reasons.
“The main driver in eating less meat is health,” said Ramsing, “while environment and animal welfare rank the lowest.”
Americans also seem open to eating more beans, which are popular in dishes such as chili and bean burritos.
“Hummus is a gateway to bean consumption,” said Ramsing.
CLF’s Andrew Thorne-Lyman, affiliated faculty, addressed consumption patterns around seafood, saying that 90 percent of Americans do not eat the recommended eight ounces of seafood per week, and that very few children eat seafood at all. A diverse food nutritionally, seafood is an important part of a healthy diet, especially because it is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids.
When his team conducts polling, it’s often to gain insight into why Americans consume so little fish, what can motivate consumers to eat more, and what makes it so complicated.
One of his findings is that, for the most part, seafood consumption rises with higher income.
“Price is the number one determinant of what people buy and eat in America,” he said.
Another finding is that salmon and shrimp are two favorites among consumers, and that it’s perceived as the safe choice. His team very recently fielded a survey exploring barriers to seafood consumption, especially among children.
In a second panel, “Assessing University Engagement in Values-Based Procurement in DC,” several students presented an overview of their research. CLF’s Fumi Agboola, a program officer, helped to advise the students, who did the research as part of a project for a class, Food Systems Practicum, which is taught by CLF’s Phil McNab, the associate director of Education & Training.
The project focused on understanding how universities do food procurement, and the degree to which their procurement accords with the core values outlined in the Good Food Purchasing Program. Those five core values are local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare, and nutrition.
Their investigation found that universities are doing well on prioritizing local economies and “doing okay” on environmental sustainability. The least prioritized value in university procurement, according to their research, is a valued workforce. Animal welfare also scored low on the list.
“We found that cost is often prioritized over values-based procurement goals,” said one of the students. “And contracts with food service providers can restrict flexibility.”
Their research found that contracts are a key determinant of the procurement process, as many institutions have contracts with companies such as Aramark, Compass Group, and Metz Culinary Management, and these corporations are less likely or able to be flexible.
One of the potential paths forward mapped by the students is to create coalitions of dining leads, with the goal of sharing best practices and ideas. Another is to develop a framework that universities may use to build new contracts with more autonomy and the flexibility needed to reach sustainability goals.