Local versus organic: a turn in consumer preferences and willingness-to-pay

Demand for local food in the United States has significantly increased over the last decade. In an attempt to understand the drivers of this demand and how they have changed over time, we investigate the literature on organic and local foods over the last few decades. We focus our review on studies that allow comparison of characteristics now associated with both local and organic food. We summarize the major findings of these studies and their implications for understanding drivers of local food demand. Prior to the late 1990s, most studies failed to consider factors now associated with local food, and the few that included these factors found very little support for them. In many cases, the lines between local and organic were blurred. Coincident with the development of federal organic food standards, studies began to find comparatively more support for local food as distinct and separate from organic food. Our review uncovers a distinct turn in the demand for local and organic food. Before the federal organic standards, organic food was linked to small farms, animal welfare, deep sustainability, community support, and many other factors that are not associated with most organic foods today. Based on our review, we argue that demand for local food arose largely in response to corporate cooptation of the organic food market and the arrival of “organic lite.” This important shift in consumer preferences away from organic and toward local food has broad implications for the environment and society. If these patterns of consumer preferences prove to be sustainable, producers, activists, and others should be aware of the implications that these trends have for the food system at large.

Interventions to promote healthy eating habits: evaluation and recommendations

Although in several EU Member States many public interventions have been running for the prevention and/or management of obesity and other nutrition-related health conditions, few have yet been formally evaluated. The multidisciplinary team of the EATWELL project will gather benchmark data on healthy eating interventions in EU Member States and review existing information on the effectiveness of interventions using a three-stage procedure (i) Assessment of the intervention's impact on consumer attitudes, consumer behaviour and diets; (ii) The impact of the change in diets on obesity and health and (iii) The value attached by society to these changes, measured in life years gained, cost savings and quality-adjusted life years. Where evaluations have been inadequate, EATWELL will gather secondary data and analyse them with a multidisciplinary approach incorporating models from the psychology and economics disciplines. Particular attention will be paid to lessons that can be learned from private sector that are transferable to the healthy eating campaigns in the public sector. Through consumer surveys and workshops with other stakeholders, EATWELL will assess the acceptability of the range of potential interventions. Armed with scientific quantitative evaluations of policy interventions and their acceptability to stakeholders, EATWELL expects to recommend more appropriate interventions for Member States and the EU, providing a one-stop guide to methods and measures in interventions evaluation, and outline data collection priorities for the future.