The International Panel on Climate Change, Lancet Commissions, and United Nations agencies have urged governments to update national dietary guidelines to prioritize sustainable diets instead of unhealthy Western dietary patterns that drive chronic diseases and environmental harms to encourage sustainable dietary patterns. Current food systems are unhealthy and unsustainable under a changing climate. Diverse proteins are nutrient-dense and could support a sustainable diet transition and food system transformation. But current business models must change that prioritize unlimited economic growth that produces health, environmental and social externalities. This presentation will describe how Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands have integrated d sustainability principles into dietary guidelines to accelerate policies and business commitments by retailers and caterers to develop new food and beverage products and use collaborative partnerships to achieve ambitious sustainable diet transition targets by 2030. I will examine how marketing and media communications have been used to encourage unhealthy and unsustainable Western dietary patterns and compete with plant-forward patterns, which have led to consumer confusion and cultural resistance to change. This presentation will explore how design principles, consumer behavior research, and strategic media communications can be used to shift societal norms that encourage a flexitarian, plant-rich dietary pattern and balances consumer expectations about taste, cost, protein quality versus diversity and convenience with health, environmental and animal welfare concerns. Government leadership is essential to incentivize businesses to support protein diversity and use paradigm-shifting strategies to redesign food systems and market a sustainable diet transition for personal and planetary health.
Vivica I. Kraak, PhD, MS, RDN is Associate Professor of Food and Nutrition Policy in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. She has over 35 years of research and teaching about policies and practices for a transition toward more equitable and sustainable diets and regenerative food systems. Dr. Kraak’s research examines food systems governance and accountability to transition to sustainable diets and food systems for personal and planetary health. Vivica earned her PhD degree in population health from Deakin University in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (2014); MS degree in nutritional sciences from Case Western Reserve University and dietetic internship at the University Hospitals of Cleveland in Ohio (1989); and BS degree in nutritional sciences from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (1986). Past positions include: Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech (2014-2021); Research Fellow at Deakin University’s World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Obesity in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (2010-2013); Nutrition and Physical Activity Advisor for Save the Children’s U.S. programs (2006-2010); Senior Program Officer at the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) in Washington, DC (2002-2006); and Research Nutritionist at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (1994-2000). She is a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, American Public Health Association, American Society for Nutrition (ASN), and ASN Committee on Advocacy and Science Policy, and served as a fellow for The Lancet Commission on the Global Syndemic (2016-2019).