Organising food differently: investigating 'alternatives', dietary change and sustainable food futures

我的研究探讨了我们如何以不同的方式组织食品系统，以便我们能够建立更可持续的食品未来。今天，人们与食物的关系及其饮食正在发生变化，以应对一系列深刻的全球挑战，这一点越来越明显。随着气候条件变得越来越不可预测，气候变化可能对全球粮食系统产生重大影响。在其他地方，对土壤肥力下降和蜜蜂等昆虫数量的担忧可能会破坏我们在这个星球上种植粮食和维持人类生命的能力。考虑到这些挑战，在一个日益分化为“饱腹”和“饥饿”的世界里，我们需要探索解决全球食品系统中这些弊病的方法。迄今为止，为了应对这一问题，我的研究集中在全球范围内的替代食品网络（AFN）。从广义上讲，AFN可以被理解为试图在超市的日常环境之外以不同的方式组织食品系统的例子。有了它，AFN可能有助于培养不同的关系和理解食物。这些网络包括社区支持农业计划、生产者-消费者直接联系、地方市场和粮食合作社等组织。我的研究表明，虽然AFN往往在小规模上工作，但可能无法单独解决这些全球性挑战，但它们促使我们提出有关我们在日常生活中组织和“做”食物的方式的重要问题。因此，他们鼓励我们不仅要问为什么我们吃我们吃的东西，而且要认识到食品实践如何带来广泛的社会，经济和环境后果。通过以一种新的方式将人们聚集在一起，而这种方式通常不是由去超市所产生的，我认为AFN是重新配置与食物关系的重要空间。此外，这并不是说，在这些“替代”空间之外，与食物的主流关系是静态的。我的研究兴趣目前正在发展，包括有多少与食品有关的重要变化，这可以通过前往英国几乎任何超市来证明。鉴于人们越来越意识到上述饮食的影响，消费者越来越有兴趣远离肉类和其他动物源性产品，从而实现我所认为的“后肉类”世界。许多人现在是“弹性饮食主义者”或“减少饮食主义者”，这些重大的饮食变化--包括广泛使用的肉类替代品，如阔恩、“假肉”产品和非乳制品--正在给我们所知的食品系统带来冲击波。例如，世界第二大肉类加工商泰森食品公司现在拥有价值数百万美元的植物性Beyond Burger公司5%的股份。市场研究表明，虽然2017年全球肉类替代品市场价值为41亿美元，但预计到2025年将扩大到75亿美元以上。这是一个预计将增长的市场，没有减弱的迹象，因为消费者的偏好从肉类转移。我的研究将在这个关键时刻对这些变化有更深入的了解，探索这些已经在进行中的饮食和文化变化。布里斯托大学是我继续发展和探索我的研究的理想场所。管理学院在可持续生产和消费的研究方面拥有广泛的专业知识，该大学还拥有跨学科的卡博特环境研究所，我的导师大卫埃文斯教授领导了粮食安全方面的重要研究。为了总结这个奖学金的目的，我打算发表一系列期刊文章，以推进及时的学术知识;促进我的研究的“面向公众”的影响;并制定一个新的研究计划，探索向“后肉”世界的转变。

My research asks how we can organise the food system differently such that we can build more sustainable food futures. Today, it is increasingly evident that people's relationships to food, and their diets, are shifting in response to a range of profound global challenges. Climate change is likely to have significant impacts on the global food system as climactic conditions become ever more unpredictable. Elsewhere, concerns around declining soil fertility and the population of insects such as bees risk undermining our ability to grow food and sustain human life on this planet. With these challenges in mind, and in a world increasingly divided into the 'stuffed' and the 'starved', we need to explore ways in which we might address these ills in the global food system.To date, and in response to this problem, my research has focused on Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) in a global context. Broadly speaking, AFNs can be understood as examples of attempts to organise the food system differently outside of the everyday context of the supermarket. With it, AFNs may serve to foster different relationships to-and understandings of-food. These networks include organisations such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) schemes, direct producer-consumer linkages, local markets, and food co-operatives. My research suggests that whilst AFNs, tending to work at a small scale, may be unable to instrumentally solve these global challenges alone, they prompt us to ask important questions about the ways in which we tend to organise and 'do' food in everyday life. Consequently, they encourage us to ask not only why we eat what we eat, but also to recognise how food practices carry extensive social, economic and environmental consequences. By bringing people together in new ways that are not typically engendered by a trip to the supermarket, I suggest that AFNs are important spaces in reconfiguring relationships with food.Further, this is not to say that mainstream relationships to food outside of these 'alternative' spaces are static. My research interests are currently developing to encompass important changes in how many relate to food, which can be evidenced by a trip to almost any supermarket in the United Kingdom. Given the growing awareness of the impacts of our diets mentioned above, consumers are increasingly interested in moving away from meat and other animal-derived products in bringing about what I frame as a possible 'post-meat' world. Many people are now 'flexitarians' or 'reducetarians', and these significant dietary changes-including the widespread availability of meat substitutes such as Quorn, 'fake meat' products and non-dairy milks-are sending shockwaves through the food system as we know it. For example, Tyson Foods, the second largest meat processor in the world, now has a 5% stake in the multi-million dollar plant-based Beyond Burger company. Market research has suggested that whilst the meat substitute market was valued at $4.1b globally in 2017, this is expected to expand to over $7.5b by 2025. This is a market which is expected to grow with no sign of abating as consumer preferences shift away from meat. My research would develop greater understanding of these shifts at this critical juncture, exploring these dietary and cultural changes which are already well underway.The University of Bristol is an ideal location for me to continue to develop and explore my research. The School of Management has extensive expertise in research around sustainable production and consumption, and the University also hosts the interdisciplinary Cabot Institute for the Environment, with important research in food security led by my mentor, Professor David Evans. To summarise the aims of this fellowship, I intend to publish a range of journal articles to advance timely scholarly knowledge; to foster the 'public facing' impact of my research; and to develop a new research proposal exploring the shift towards a 'post-meat' world.