New technologies can help people make sustainable dietary decisions

August 8, 2022 by Asia Food Journal

Blockchain-backed app gives details about meals impacts and mixed buyer selection

Aalto researchers have developed and examined a pilot app to help customers consider their meals decisions. The research is a part of the EU-ATARCA venture which goals to create and promote ‘anti-rival tokens’, a blockchain-based expertise that encourages the sharing of digital items.

Though customers are more and more involved in regards to the environmental and well being impacts of their meals decisions, many people are uncertain what modifications they need to make. People typically really feel that they don’t have sufficient data to information their decisions, and it’s additionally onerous to see the affect of particular person consumption habits. The Food Futures research project, led by Visiting Researcher S. M. Amadae of the Department of Communications and Networking, addresses these challenges by offering clear data on prices and advantages and aggregating particular person decisions so their mixed impact turns into obvious.

Design researchers from Aalto’s Creative Sustainability Programme developed a Food Wellbeing Index to seize the social, environmental, well being, and financial penalties of meals decisions. The index integrates a number of variables to offer a holistic overview that displays the sustainability affect of dietary decisions. In the long term, the integrity and transparency of this data can be supported via the usage of blockchain all through the provision chain.

Building this data into an app offers customers clear and simply actionable data, as was seen in a pilot research on the University of Helsinki’s Unicafe eating places. ‘For vegan-curious participants, the index influenced rethinking their meal choice after viewing the impact on various variables, making them feel empowered to make a positive change,’ says Shreya Sood, who developed the index along with Ruta Jumite. ‘Vegan participants, on the other hand, got a sense of being appreciated for their default choices.’

For some customers, the app offered new insights into the affect of sure meals. ‘For example, many participants said the app was an eye-opener about the high emissions associated with cheese,’ says Sood, noting that the app helped people start to query their assumptions about sure protein sources.

In addition to giving customers data to information their particular person choice, the app additionally makes use of anti-rival blockchain tokens and a distributed ledger to measure and combination decisions, exhibiting customers how particular person actions add as much as a collective impact. Because the aggregated knowledge replicate the meals decisions and aspirations of the group, they can be used to establish gaps and shortcomings that should be addressed by policy-making in an effort to meet sustainability targets.

Blockchain instruments are additionally used to reward particular person decisions. In the long term, the researchers say these instruments may present policy-makers with a method to recognise people’ constructive sustainability affect.

‘Overall, users in the pilot project felt that it could help translate sustainability goals into actions. It motivated them to consistently make sustainable choices and created incentives to eat in a climate-friendly way,’ says Sood. The Food Futures analysis workforce is planning to run a second pilot experiment within the autumn.