A social practice perspective on meat reduction in Australian households: Rethinking intervention strategies

Abstract

Recent widespread calls and strategies for consumers to change and reduce meat consumption position meat as both an environmentally unsustainable and highly desired food. Such change is often understood as an unattractive and difficult process of relinquishment, and that perspective informs interventions designed to lessen the presumed hardship involved. This article troubles such assumptions by reference to a practice theoretical approach and by extending conceptual debates circulating within consumption geographies. The work explores food preferences and tastes generated in what I describe as everyday “mealing” practices, within which meat's relevance may be diminishing, contingent, or negotiable. I draw on go‐along stories about meals‐in‐flux told to me by Australian householders participating in “Meat Free Mondays” and/or consuming meat substitute products. I analyse the practical, material, and sensorial aspects of “mealing‐practice” change and show how the stir‐fry is a meal displacing “meat and three veg.” The work contributes to geographical research increasingly focused on understanding desires and tastes produced through everyday practices. In the process, it complicates understandings of meat consumption reduction as sacrifice and points to possibilities for new research and more effective forms of intervention.

Capabilities and Opportunities of Flexitarians to Become Food Innovators for a Healthy Planet: Two Explorative Studies

“…Among other studies, recent qualitative research, e.g., [6,9,10], stresses the impact of the social context as a barrier to reducing meat consumption. The current study confirmed this.…”

“…Even though the field of meat reduction and flexitarianism has blossomed in recent years [5], this does not imply that it has reached a stage that leaves room only for quantitative studies. Recent qualitative studies [6][7][8][9][10][11] prove that interview-based research produces insightful results, highlighting mundane barriers or ordinary facilitators in the process of lowering meat consumption. Such everyday difficulties or possibilities are frequently situated in the domains of capabilities and opportunities.…”

Reconfiguring food materialities: plant-based food consumption practices in antagonistic landscapes

“…This paper can be understood as part of an emerging body of work that treats food consumption as more than a social and cultural practice, also addressing the material and embodied nature of food practices (Daly 2020;Neuman 2019). This approach, at times referred to as post-human (Daly 2020), socio-material (Domaneschi 2019), or material-semiotic (Evans 2020) practice theory, allows us to offer a different, but complementary, explanation as to how plant-based consumption is increasingly becoming possible.…”

“…Moving beyond a narrow focus on food itself, our approach broadens this scope to include the multiple material elements making up the socio-material landscape that enables and shapes plant-based consumption. This broader approach is also accompanied by a move away from examining vegan eating (Twine 2017a), or mealing-practice (Daly 2020), toward bundles of plant-based shopping, cooking, and eating practices.…”

Food Marketing as a Special Ingredient in Consumer Choices: The Main Insights from Existing Literature

“…However, there are new tendencies, and some segments currently privilege healthy [ 1 ] and sustainable characteristics [ 2 ]. Food consumption has several dimensions, including that of a social and cultural magnitude, and this sometimes compromises policies to change unadjusted behaviours [ 3 ] and influence food perceptions [ 4 ]. The sociodemographic and behavioural factors also have their implications [ 5 ] on consumer behaviour.…”