Sustainability or Spin? The prevalence, impact, and regulation of 'Green claims' on foods in the UK

Supervisors: Dr Jessica Renzella, Dr Asha Kaur, Professor Mike Rayner

This project is suitable for a 3-year DPhil. There are different ways the project outline below can be further developed, depending on the skills and interests of the applicant.

Unhealthy diets are a major cause of ill health. Unsustainable diets are also contributing to the climate and nature emergencies. Food labelling policies could improve both the healthiness and environmental impact of diets through influencing consumer choice, food availability decisions by retailers, new product development and reformulation by manufacturers, etc.

Sustainability claims (one relatively recent and growing aspect of food labelling) are messages or representations, which, in any form, state, suggest or imply that a food has particular beneficial characteristics related to its impact on human health, animal welfare, the environment or social wellbeing.

In previous research we have found that health-related claims (HRCs) (e.g. ‘low fat’, ‘good for the heart’) have a significant impact on dietary choices but that foods with HRCs only have a marginally better nutritional profile than foods without such claims. This research used 2013 data collected from packets by hand.

As well as HRCs for foods, there is a growing number of environment-related claims (ERCs or ‘green claims’) (e.g. ‘low-carbon’, ‘eco-friendly’). It is unclear what impact ERCs have on the healthiness and sustainability of diets and whether regulation of such claims is necessary to prevent so called ‘greenwashing’. Greenwashing refers to the deceptive practice of making misleading or false claims about a company's or product's environmental impact to create the impression of being more environmentally friendly than they actually are. Further to this, there is limited research on how consumers understand and interact with ‘green claims’. For example, do consumers view ‘vegan’, ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ claims as being about health, the environment, animal welfare or something else?

The proposed project includes quantitative and qualitative research methods. It will start by estimating the prevalence of HRCs and ERCs in the UK and the composition of foods carrying such claims. This will involve using data from the foodDB database developed by Oxford researchers. The foodDB database contains food composition and food labelling data for all foods and drinks available in nine UK online supermarkets collected weekly since November 2017. It also has metadata such as food category information and environmental footprints for foods for some extracts.

The project will then involve exploring the health and environmental impacts of HRCs and ERCs by comparing foods with and without such claims using validated scores of the healthiness and environmental impact of foods.

The last stage of the project will involve Public and Policy Dialogues informed by the results of the prevalence and impact studies. The aims of public dialogues, which could take the form of focus groups, are to understand

1. How consumers engage with ‘green claims’, including claim understanding, use, and navigation of conflicting information (e.g. UPF and ‘good for the planet’)
2. Consumers’ reactions to prevalence and health and environmental impact results as well as concerns about the lack of ‘green claims’ regulation
3. Desires and suggestions for changes to claim presentation/communication and potential regulation

The results of Public Dialogues will inform Policy Dialogues. These could take the form of two deliberative workshops informed by a Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF). The aim of Policy Dialogues, which will be conducted with industry and policy stakeholders, separately, are to

1. Understand factors that may influence (e.g. facilitators and barriers) the development and implementation of suggested improvements to claim presentation/communication
2. Understand factors that may influence (e.g. facilitators and barriers) the development and implementation of suggested regulation changes
3. Prioritise policies related to ‘green claims’ – suggested by consumers, industry stakeholders, and policymakers

Policy dialogues will produce a list of prioritised policy options for improving the regulation of green claims in the UK.

Preferred applicant background/skills: The ideal candidate will have a Masters degree in a relevant area; will have experience of using qualitative and quantitative research methods; experience working with large datasets; and an interest in diet and public health.

If you are interested in applying for this project, please contact one or more of the named supervisors by email with a copy of your CV.

Please note that this project is not funded but the successful applicant will be eligible for departmental/university funding.