Future-oriented nutritional behaviour

Problem-solving- and transformation-oriented research towards more sustainable food systems

Health-promoting, environmentally compatible, socially just and economically viable - this is what nutrition should look like today and tomorrow. Only in this way it can contribute to solving numerous problems related to nutrition. Future-orientation in the field of nutrition requires a fundamental transformation of today's food systems and thus changes in current nutritional behaviour. Numerous voices from politics, science and civil society are calling for a far-reaching change. The major challenge for all those involved is how this change can succeed in practice: How can people be empowered to change their behaviour and how can structures be promoted that enhance well-being and quality of life in line with sustainable development?

Research in the area "Future-oriented Nutritional Behaviour" aims to initiate and support transformation processes in the field of nutrition in line with a sustainable development. Thereby the focus lies on searching for effective implementation pathways for the necessary change that are viable for the broad society. The search for transformation pathways is addressed from different angles and from different perspectives. A close link between the research areas "Nutritional behaviour of vulnerable population groups", "Socio-ecological nutrition transformation" and "Sustainable nutrition" enables necessary synergies between different areas of expertise at the Department of Nutritional Behaviour. This supports a comprehensive view on problems, starting points for transformation processes and possible ways of designing them. Contents, concepts, approaches and methods from empirical social research, sustainability sciences, systems sciences, transdisciplinarity and transformation research are brought together for the field of nutrition and ways for the implementation of transformation processes are developed, tested and enhanced.