Before I focused my career on climate change and food systems, I earned two degrees in creative writing. I’ve always been interested in the power of narrative to influence social and political behavior. The fact that something as simple as a well-framed story can change the way people relate to and make decisions about important issues, for me, is a bridge between writing and climate change work. However, I don’t hear this connection being considered as often as (I think) it should be. So, in this post, I just want to direct you to some research on this topic, which you can find below:
Vincent Carragher, Bernadette O’Regan, Michael Peters & Richard Moles (2018) Novel resource saving interventions: the case of modelling and storytelling, Local Environment, 23:5, 518-535, DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2018.1434493
Bloomfield, E.F., Manktelow, C. Climate communication and storytelling. Climatic Change167, 34 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03199-6
Moezzi, M., Janda, K. B., & Rotmann, S. (2017). Using stories, narratives, and storytelling in energy and climate change research. Energy Research & Social Science, 31, 1-10. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.06.034
De Meyer, K., Coren, E., McCaffrey, M. and Slean, C., 2020. Transforming the stories we tell about climate change: from ‘issue’to ‘action’. Environmental Research Letters, 16(1), p.015002.
Bloomfield, E.F. and Manktelow, C., 2021. Climate communication and storytelling. Climatic Change, 167(3-4), p.34.
The number of people living in urban areas globally is projected to increase from about 55% currently to about 68% by 20501,2, largely due to human migration. Indeed, human migration is expected to increase to 2050, with the majority of migrants moving within the borders of their own countries and from rural to urban areas3. With this dramatic increase in urban population, urban food systems need to adapt to make sure everyone has access to a healthy diet produced within planetary boundaries. This adaptation is sometimes called sustainable food systems transitions (SFST). As the key driver of urban population growth, migration presents a number of challenges to SFST — but along with these comes opportunity. In this post, we’ll look briefly at how two of these challenges can be flipped for positive change.
Food insecurity
The challenge
Food insecurity can exist at both ends of the rural-urban migration process. Many people use migration (whether temporary or permanent) as a coping strategy for food insecurity4 by moving to places where food and/or income is more accessible. Therefore, food insecurity can be viewed as a driver of migration. On the other hand, when migrants arrive at their destinations, they are also susceptible to food insecurity depending on their supports and their socioeconomic situation5. Because a sustainable food system provides everyone with access to a nutritious, healthy diet, this food insecurity must be solved in order to achieve SFST.
The opportunity
This dual food insecurity issue gives us a chance to look beyond rural vs urban food security and toward re-establishing healthy relationships between urban areas and rural hinterlands for better food security in both. The degradation of rural-urban relationships is sometimes a driver of food insecurity in rural areas6. This is because urban food procurers have access to a far-reaching and competitive market and can therefore demand that rural farmers sell their products at unprofitable prices7. This can cause financial security in rural areas, which can lead to food insecurity. Therefore, by moving primary food production for urban areas to the rural areas that surround them, food insecurity in rural areas can be reduced, which could also reduce the need for rural-urban migration. At the same time, urban food systems that import food from international sources tend to be more vulnerable to shocks, including food unavailability and price spikes that make food less affordable6,7. These shocks can lead to an increase in urban food insecurity, with vulnerable populations, such as migrants, bearing the brunt6. Reconnecting urban areas with rural hinterlands can increase the resilience of urban food systems, which can have positive impacts on urban food security.
Post-migration dietary changes
The challenge
Migration can be considered a “turning point” for migrant diets7. When they arrive at their urban destinations, migrants can undergo changes to their dietary practices, often ones that bring their diets closer to the typical diet in the destination. This change is known as dietary acculturation8, and is often associated with migrants shifting away from more traditional foods in favor of more globalized foods8,9 (see my post on defining globalized and traditional diets for more background). If urban areas are seeing an increase in population as well as an increase (through in-migration) in the uptake of globalized diets, which tend to be less healthy and less environmentally sustainable9,10, then it can be argued that migration is counter-productive for SFST.
The opportunity
If migrant diets and pre-existing urban diets are integrated properly, urban dietary practices at large can become healthier and more sustainable. As my master’s thesis argues, urban region-specific research comparing migrant dietary practices and pre-existing urban dietary practices can be used to identify “sweet spots” for health and sustainability where the two intersect. In other words, we can ask: how do migrant and pre-existing urban diets compare, where do they intersect, and how can each be adjusted for optimal health and sustainability? Once these questions have been answered, policies and interventions can be created to help move urban dietary practices toward the “sweet spot.” In this approach, migrants do not exacerbate the urban globalized diet problem and instead become key influencers for positive change in urban SFST.
IOM. (2021). World Migration Report 2022 (978-92-9268-078-7). https://publications.iom.int/books/world-migration-report-2022
FAO. (2017). Strengthening sector policies for better food security and nutrition results (Rural Migration, Issue. https://www.fao.org/3/i8166e/i8166e.pdf
Carney, M.A., Krause, K.C. Immigration/migration and healthy publics: the threat of food insecurity. Palgrave Commun6, 93 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0461-0
van der Gaast, K., van Leeuwen, E., & Wertheim-Heck, S. (2020). City-Region Food Systems and Second Tier Cities: From Garden Cities to Garden Regions. Sustainability, 12(6), 2532. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/6/2532
Terragni, L., Garnweidner, L. M., Pettersen, K. S. & Mosdøl, A. Migration as a Turning Point in Food Habits: The Early Phase of Dietary Acculturation among Women from South Asian, African, and Middle Eastern Countries Living in Norway. Ecology of Food and Nutrition53, 273-291 (2014). https://doi.org:10.1080/03670244.2013.817402
Adegboye, A. R. A., Moore, A. P., Stewart, C. & Begum, G. in Social Science Perspectives on Global Public Health 169-178 (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2022).
Li, J. et al. Dietary acculturation generates virtual carbon flow: The overlaid effects of geographically varied dietary patterns and population migration in urban and materials-flowing China. Journal of Cleaner Production276, 124283 (2020). https://doi.org:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124283
In order to compare one type of diet against another in terms of sustainability, health, environmental impact, etc., each diet must be classified based on its common components. This is also known as typologising, and it helps us simplify complex things so that general patterns can be analysed. One well-known example of this in the food world is the Mediterranean diet. My guess is that phrase brings certain foods to mind — maybe olive oil, seafood, or certain vegetables. Many of us are familiar with this diet because it has been typologised, researched, and widely promoted for its health benefits. So, what about globalized and traditional diets?
Globalized vs traditional
Globalized diets, also known as “industrial,” “western,” “modern,” “urban,” or “commercial” diets, are characterized by high intake of processed foods, fats (particularly saturated), domesticated animal-source foods, sugar, and refined grains, as well as low intake of whole grains, vegetables, and fiber1, 2. In the literature, globalized diets are often discussed in terms of their departure from traditional diets, the characteristics of which are essentially the opposite of globalized diets (high in vegetables, fiber, whole grains and low in fats, processed foods, sugars, refined grains, and animal-source foods)3.
Globalized diets are so called because they are more often found in urban areas and are seen as a product of industrialization and urbanization. As areas urbanize due to population growth and human migration, demand for food is higher and food systems respond by making a variety of foods available. It’s important to note that, while this increases the availability of processed foods, animal-source foods, and others that contribute to a less healthy and less sustainable diet, many urban areas also have higher availability and variety of fruits and vegetables, showing that urbanization can also provide unique benefits to dietary health and sustainability. On the other hand, these fruits and vegetables are sometimes pricier and of lower quality than those in non-urbanized areas4. Components of globalized diets, such as processed foods, ready-to-eat meals, refined grains and sugars, and animal-source foods, also tend to be more affordable in urban areas5. Cost can influence behavior through two cognitive routes: first, even when urban dwellers are inclined to eat a more traditional diet, affordability might dictate that they choose globalized diet components instead; second, migrants in urban areas might have had a harder time affording more globalized foods (i.e. meats) before moving, and are therefore inclined to indulge in them once they’re affordable5. And, we haven’t touched on one key factor in the rise of the urban diet: the allure of globalized foods. After all, our hungry animal instincts love salt, sugar, and fat, so we tend to want the burger and chips before wanting the vegetable stir-fry.
So, we seem to have this binary, with globalized diets on one end and traditional on the other, fully defined and functioning as expected. Right?
Not quite.
The challenge of the dietary spectrum
The problem with typologising something as complex and variable as diet is that it puts aside nuance in the interest of order. It’s important to remember that we are generally talking about dietary components, or the food items that make up a person’s diet, and not the way they’re prepared, eaten, or wasted, which are integral parts of dietary behavior and can impact sustainability and health. Also, when we define diets, we’re talking about trends and not universal truths. For example, while globalized diets are more common in urban areas, not every urban dweller consumes a globalized diet. Furthermore, it’s safe to assume that not every urban dweller who does consume a globalized diet does so in the same way; some might consume a lot of meat but few processed foods, while others follow a vegan diet but eat a lot of processed food. If we scale up this thinking from the individual person to the individual urban area, we find the same nuance. Some urban areas do not tend toward globalized diets as they grow; in fact, a study on urbanising food systems in Indonesia found that only one of thirteen urban areas showed signs of transitioning toward globalized diets6. Time and circumstances can also impact diet on individual and city levels, such as the length of time a person has lived in an urban area or food shortages from food system shocks like armed conflict or drought.
Traditional diets are similarly difficult to categorize. A romantic view of traditional diets gives us a picture of health and environmental balance—and a romantic view is essentially what our current traditional diet definition is. The reality is that traditional diets also sometimes contain high levels of animal-source foods, fats, or other elements usually considered globalized. Also, depending on the place, the time, and the circumstances, some traditional diets can lack variety and leave the eater lacking certain nutrients.
In short, people are all different and urban areas are all different, and this nuance is critical when it comes to shaping policy and creating interventions that can help us move toward food system sustainability.
Why diet definitions matter in food systems transformations
Using diet typologies paired with dietary guides for human and planetary health, such as the one below from EAT-Lancet, can help us develop an understanding of where we are and where we need to go. If we compare globalized diets, traditional diets, and the EAT-Lancet guide, we can theorize that, because traditional diets more closely match the healthy guidelines, they are better or our health, better for the planet, and should be promoted.
This understanding can help us create policies and interventions for food systems that help prioritize the right type of diet. But here’s the nuance: if we happen to be working in an urban area where globalized diets are less common, or one where social or financial factors dictate food choices, our policy or intervention promoting traditional diets is likely to be a waste of energy and resources if it is not properly targeted. If we happen to be working in an urban area where traditional diets lacking variety and globalized diets intersect, then there will likely be a sweet spot between these two diets where human and planetary health are optimized. The possibilities for unique situations are almost endless, and it is therefore imperative that policies and interventions for specific urban areas are built upon research from that area.
What’s in a name?
In research, it’s always important to be precise with our language. The nuance behind the names in dietary typologies shows us that even precise language sometimes requires more explanation, more digging, and more caution.
References
Cyr-Scully, A., Howard, A. G., Sanzone, E., Meyer, K. A., Du, S., Zhang, B., Wang, H., & Gordon-Larsen, P. (2022). Characterizing the urban diet: development of an urbanized diet index. Nutrition Journal, 21(1), 55. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12937-022-00807-8
Amorim, A. L., João Borges; Amaral Sobral, Paulo José. (2022). On how people deal with industrialized and non-industrialized food: A theoretical analysis. Frontiers in Nutrition, 9. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.948262
Batal, M., Deaconu, A., & Steinhouse, L. (2023). The Nutrition Transition and the Double Burden of Malnutrition. In N. J. Temple, T. Wilson, J. D. R. Jacobs, & G. A. Bray (Eds.), Nutritional Health: Strategies for Disease Prevention (pp. 33-44). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24663-0_3
Holmboe-Ottesen G, Wandel M. Changes in dietary habits after migration and consequences for health: a focus on South Asians in Europe. Food Nutr Res. 2012;56. doi: 10.3402/fnr.v56i0.18891. Epub 2012 Nov 6. PMID: 23139649; PMCID: PMC3492807.
Berggreen-Clausen, A., Hseing Pha, S., Mölsted Alvesson, H., Andersson, A., & Daivadanam, M. (2022). Food environment interactions after migration: a scoping review on low- and middle-income country immigrants in high- income countries. Public Health Nutrition, 25(1), 136-158. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980021003943
If you’ve read my Project Introduction page, you know my research is aimed at determining what (if any) changes are made to migrant diets when they move to an urban area (Cali, Bahir Dar, and Hanoi in this case) and how those changes impact the health and sustainability outcomes of the urban area’s food system. After just over two months of research, I have learned a very valuable lesson about research: the road you walk doesn’t always look like the one on the map.
My research period is quite short — only four months from first day to final draft — and that time constraint is a barrier to collecting primary data, which requires ethics approval, survey drafting, dissemination, and analysis. However, after weeks of researching, I concluded that there also just wasn’t enough secondary data in these three cities to answer my research question. Census data was not complete or detailed enough to give me an accurate picture of the demographic changes over time, data on dietary components, especially disaggregated by ethnicity, did not seem to exist anywhere, and on top of this, migration is such a complex, resource-intensive thing to measure that many sources I found had outdated migration data. When I realized what a lack of useful information I had after weeks of scouring datasets and papers, I was disappointed. It felt like my project might not succeed. But then I realized how interesting it was that I couldn’t answer my research question with the data available, because that suggested something I hadn’t expected: there are gaps in this area of study.
As it turns out, studying post-migration dietary change is an area picking up speed in the research world, with several papers published in the last ten years or so. However, when I compared the topics of 40 of these papers, I found some interesting patterns. Most of the studies agreed on one thing: most migrants moving to new areas adopted more “western,” “modern,” or “industrialized” ways of eating (we’ll unpack what that means in a different post). But 31 of the 40 studies looked at migrants moving from developing countries to developed countries, with only 6 of 40 looking into internal rural-urban migration within developing countries. 19 of the 40 studies looked specifically at the role of migrant dietary changes in health outcomes, such as the risk of developing a diet-related disease like obesity, high blood pressure, or metabolic syndrome. Zero of these studies aimed to determine the sustainability outcomes from migrant dietary changes. I had myself a gap.
My thesis supervisors and fellow researchers suggested I shift from viewing my project as a study to viewing it as a piece of thought leadership, with the new end product being a Perspective Paper. A Perspective is a mix between a literature review and an opinion; it proposes a new perspective on an area of research and then backs it up with evidence. The result can be that future research is nudged in a certain direction.
So, my new objective is clear: to write a Perspective paper that argues for the collection and use of migrant dietary change data on the city-region level to determine the impact of the changes on urban food system sustainability. Using this data, urban areas can leverage migrant dietary habits toward food system sustainability.
Has this project followed the road I laid down on the map? No. But I’ve learned that this is normal in research, and I’ve learned to adapt. I’ve learned that the way the face of a project morphs as questions are answered (and not answered) along the way is the research. And that’s what I’m here to do: learn.
Now that I’ve got my feet on the ground and am beginning to draft my paper, I’m excited to share some ideas and information on migration, diets, and urban food systems here on the blog.
