Shaping micro and macro food environments: the role of Mediterranean Diet

One of the keys to food system transformation is the transformation of food environments. Food environments are emergent properties of food system interactions, as actors, rules, artifacts, coalesce into local patterns that enable and constrain people’s behavior. They are structures of everyday life that constitute people’s lifeworlds. Food environments are subsystems of broader food systems. They are shaped and influenced by the broader food system, and shape and influence food-related activities of individuals, households, communities. At the same time, transformation of food environments can contribute to the broader system transformation. The multilevel approach, one of the most considered approaches to transition, proposes a theory of change that takes into consideration bottom-up dynamics, based on ‘innovation niches’ that provide alternative models and challenge the dominant models through scaling up and replication. To apply this approach to food environments, we consider two types: ‘micro’ food environments, which exert their influence over individuals and households, ‘macro’ food environments, that constitute the frameworks for the reproduction of a multiplicity of food environments. How can the ‘Mediterranean diet’ concept affect micro and macro food environments in a strategy of food system transformation? We must consider that one of the most relevant barriers to behavioral change is knowledge. Knowledge gap can be articulated into a) awareness gap, that is a gap of understanding of the link between behavior and health (of own body and of the planet); b) motivation gap, that is a gap that links awareness to the willingness to change. In most cases, this gap is related to trade-offs between the benefits of the change and the expected costs necessary to obtain the change; c) action gap, which is related to the access to suitable solutions to a recognized problem. The Mediterranean diet can address this knowledge gap. It is a resource for ‘soft power’, that resonates with people’s lifeworld and demonstrates that pathways for change are feasible. Even though daily diets are far from its principles, the narrative that the Mediterranean diet underpins provides a resource to fill the knowledge gap. In terms of awareness gap, it shows a link between diets and body and planet health; it provides motivation to act as it creates a coherence between values and behavior embedded into local culture; it also can provide actionable knowledge as it is based on a knowledge reservoir related to local gastronomy. The Mediterranean Diet values and principles can be turned into resources for transforming micro and macro food environments.