What is the role of food advertising in the context of net zero? In this blog post, Trish Fisher summarises a recent TABLE debate and reflects on the issue of greenwashing, alternative economic models such as B-corporations, government regulation of sustainability claims, and the challenges for the advertising industry of redefining a “good life” that is compatible with sustainability goals. This blog post is written by Trish Fisher, an intern at TABLE working on multiple projects. Currently, she is a graduate student at the University of Michigan pursuing dual master’s degrees in public policy and public health. Trish’s research interests lie at the intersection of climate, food, and health policy.

May 2022: This call has now closed. Thank you to everyone who has submitted a proposal. TABLE is issuing a call for proposals, open to anyone who is affiliated with an organisation based in Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East or Asia. To explore some of the most salient and relevant food debates happening in and around food systems across the world, we are looking for writers who are able to lay out the landscape of these food debates as they occur in different geographical locations, the stakeholders involved, and the underpinning evidence, values and assumptions that lie at the heart of these contestations.

Dr Keren Papier is a Senior Nutritional Epidemiologist working in the Cancer Epidemiology Unit (CEU), based in the Oxford Department of Population Health, at the University of Oxford. Her research at the CEU includes investigating diet and disease associations using large-scale cohort data (including the Million Women Study, EPIC-Oxford and the UK Biobank). She is also the principal investigator for the Feeding the Future Study (or FEED).

Dr Abigail Muscat works at Wageningen University and Research, where she completed her PhD assessing the roles of science and policy in addressing trade-offs between different uses of biomass (e.g. food vs feed). at the Animal Production Systems group. She is passionate about transforming food systems so that they are healthy, equitable and sustainable for all.

This piece is written by Tamsin Blaxter, researcher and writer at TABLE, as part of TABLE's work theme Power in the food system: what’s powering the future of protein? 

Antonin Pépin is a PhD candidate at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRAE) and at the Technical Centre for Fruits and Vegetables (CTIFL). His research focuses on environmental assessment of French organic vegetable farms using the Life Cycle Assessment method. He has an agronomist background and has worked for an environmental NGO and for an organic waste treatment industry. You can reach Antonin at antonin.pepin@ctifl.fr. Hayo van der Werf works at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRAE). His research focuses on the multicriteria assessment of the environmental impacts of agri-food systems. He mainly uses the life cycle assessment methodology and is most interested in assessing of organic agriculture production systems.

This blog post is written by Dr Luke McGuire, who is a lecturer at the University of Exeter Department of Psychology with interests in social & moral development across childhood, adolescence and emerging adulthood.

Anke Brons is a PhD candidate at Aeres University of Applied Sciences Almere and the Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University & Research. Her research focuses on questions of inclusiveness in relation to healthy and sustainable food practices. Dr Sigrid Wertheim-Heck is associate professor global food system transformation in the Environmental Policy Group at WUR, and is professor Food and Healthy Living at Aeres University of Applied Sciences, both in The Netherlands. Her interest in urban food systems informs her agenda on the relationship between urbanisation, food provisioning and food consumption. She is part of TABLE’s board of directors. This blog post is based on a Dutch essay, originally published in the Flevo Campus essay bundle ‘Veerkracht als opdracht’ (Resilience as a mission).