Working Out a Sustainable Diet: The Contested Ethics of Food Consumption in the Netherlands, 1960–85

From the 1960s onwards, the sustainability of the modern diet became a topic of fierce discussion in industrialised societies. Vocal critics proposed radical alternatives to the prevailing modes of production, but their impact remained fairly modest. To understand how Western European countries nonetheless became ‘light green societies’ (Michael Bess), this article assesses the distinct interpretation of sustainable food consumption which was championed by consumer organisations since the 1960s. Tracing the steps of the Nutrition Education Bureau (Voorlichtingsbureau voor de Voeding) and the C... Mehr ...