Global dietary emissions could drop by 17 percent if everyone adopted a healthier, more sustainable diet, mainly by shifting from red meat to legumes and nuts. But not all countries and income groups equally contribute to global emissions, varying between high-income and low-income countries. Within the countries, wealthier groups tend to consume more of these high-emitting foods. In the case of Western Europe, these differences are less pronounced. All in all, over half (56.9 percent) of the global population currently over-consumes animal products. Globally, groups that over-consume meat and dairy products could reduce emissions by 32.4 percent by adopting other lifestyles. Dietary shifts concern all Europeans. One of the main obstacles to the adoption of a different lifestyle is that guidelines to improve diets are not adapted to regional traditions. Eating is a deeply personal, traditional, and cultural matter.
The EU-funded SWITCH project, uniting 20 partners from NGOs, academia, and businesses across Western Europe, addresses the need for a European-level dietary shift considering regional characteristics to make effective change by supporting private-public collaborations. The Future Food Institute, an Italian-based social enterprise with global horizons that aims to build a more equitable world is pioneering in bridging institutions, industry, and communities to co-create impactful solutions.
Within SWITCH, the Institute plays a key role in engaging grassroots community networks and communicating the project’s vision: “Every community holds ancient wisdom about food, nature, and life. It’s time to move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and recognize that real change begins when science enters into dialogue with communities. Through our work, we strive to give voice to local territories, turn knowledge into action, and build new food habits that heal the planet and regenerate our sense of belonging. SWITCH is a grassroots lab that reminds us that every sustainable diet is, above all, an act of care, for people and for the Earth,” says Sara Roversi, Founder and President of the Future Food Institute.
Scientific partners from University Federico II of Naples and the Chalmers University of Technology have developed the SWITCH Diet, designed to guide individuals and communities towards healthier and sustainable food choices. The dietary recommendations draw from the national Food-Based Dietary Guidelines of each participating country. With this approach, SWITCH partners aim to generate tangible successes on the ground that can inform and inspire bottom-up policy proposals.
Regional communities are at the core of the project—the groundwork comprises six Food Hubs in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and Sweden. These hubs represent City-Region Food Systems, geographical areas that include urban centers and their surroundings, where people, food, goods, and resources circulate.
Food Hubs are the place to address systemic food challenges inclusively since they are rooted in local contexts. “You cannot just talk about health and sustainability; you also have to think about tradition, local products, and also the gastronomy culture that we have,” says Maria Biörklund Helgesson, the Swedish Food Hub leader and Project Manager at the Research Institute of Sweden (RISE), underlining the importance of giving more weight to culture and regional identity when thinking of future diets. The Switch project brings together distinct local stakeholders, creating a space where climate change and population health concerns meet personal identity and tradition.
In the Sardinian Hub, for example, one project is creating a network of food practitioners across 57 municipalities to promote local agrobiodiversity, cultural heritage, and food security. The activity focuses on regional varieties of lentils and chickpeas that are slowly being lost. The focus on local legumes serves the necessity of a weekly intake of 150 grams of legumes established by the SWITCH diet. SWITCH Hubs are crucial in connecting dietary guidelines to local contexts.
The Food Hubs network creates opportunities for science to meet everyday life. In this context, collaboration with local authorities is vital. According to Isabelle Terrasson, Head of Agroecology and Food Policy Strategy at Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole (France), the municipality has strengthened the collaboration with the researchers for the launch of the city’s agroecology and food policy in 2015. Still, the SWITCH project has helped them tighten this connection by bringing support and stimulation to go toward new projects and an evaluation of existing public policy to set up new objectives. For instance, the French Hub has collaborated with the local authorities to transform the pre-existing BOCAL platform, a digital space in which citizens can find sustainable and healthy choices through restaurants, grocery stores on the Montpellier map. The partnership has widened the scope of the platform into a more inclusive process where a volunteer-based citizen committee manages and updates the spaces. Researchers at the Hub helped with stakeholder engagement to create the committee. A critical element of the project is that researchers and policymakers should not tell citizens what to eat but give them the instruments to make sustainable choices themselves.
In an era where global food systems are under pressure, the driving force for change in Europe lies beyond the major institutional players or top-down policies. It is within local communities that, day by day, preserve and nurture traditions, knowledge, and sustainable practices. It is through the dialogue between science and culture, between innovation and tradition, that we can transform the essence of the way we eat and live. SWITCH represents this new paradigm for regeneration, in which sustainable diet becomes a collective response to a global challenge. Change begins when we listen to communities and commit together to a healthier, fairer future.
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Photo courtesy of Melanie Vaz, Unsplash
