Defining Sustainable Food for Consumers

Consumers are increasingly interested in sustainable food (Forbes et al., 2009) due to growing concerns for environmental matters among other issues. Currently, there are many varying definitions for the term “sustainable food”, however, consumers often lack understanding of the term. A systematic literature review was conducted to investigate what consumers understand sustainable food to be. It is evident from the literature that consumers lack understanding of the term and frequently associate sustainable food to be plant-based food, organic food and local food. Additionally, consumers associate sustainable food with being good for the environment, thus neglecting economic and social aspects. The implications of this study involve improving consumer knowledge through policy approaches which include implementing public information campaigns and labelling (Garnett et al., 2015). This study highlights the need for the literature to categorise the research accurately based on all three pillars of sustainable food.