The economics of the nutrition and sustainable diet transition

The process of economic development brings along a transformation of diets that initially generates benefits in the form of additional calories and reduced undernutrition, but growing prosperity eventually correlates with nutritionally undesirable adjustments and a rise in diet-related chronic diseases. This nutrition transition has also considerable macroeconomic and environmental significance, making the search for underlying causes an important priority for food economists interested in sustainable diets. Most of existing research, however, originates from public health and points to broad distal macroeconomic factors, such as urbanization and globalization, without identifying the precise behavioural and structural causes of the transition. In this context, food economics provides a framework to disentangle the influences of the numerous correlates of economic development (for example, prices, income, state of the labour market, health care, informational environment). The chapter reviews this framework and its few applications, concluding to the need for more research into the factors linked to economic development that drive food choices. Building a deep understanding of the causes of the nutritional transition is a necessary first step to harness the potential of dietary change to contribute to the 'Great Food Transformation' required to make food systems sustainable.