Food is intended to provide us with the necessary nutrients and energy to survive, yet we all have a unique psychological, emotional, physical, cultural, and social relationship with food that contributes to our overall well-being (Eiseman, 2019). However, our relationship with food is at risk due to changes in the global climate. Scientists and researchers have conveyed their concern for climate change impacts and the risks it poses to global food security. The risks include increasing temperatures, drought, intensive rainfall events, and invasive pests or weeds all of which reduce crop yields and increase food prices (Goldenberg, 2014; Myers et al., 2017). Additionally, recent evidence has shown that due to a high concentration of carbon dioxide in the air, the nutritional value of staple crops such as rice and wheat is decreasing (Ebi & Ziska, 2018). Thus, climate change threatens our physical relationship with food.

On an emotional, social, and psychological level, individuals that rely on their morning cup of coffee, glass of wine with dinner, or a perfect vanilla bean ice cream cone in the summer may find these foods more difficult to acquire, either because they are too expensive or too difficult to produce. Tim Gore, the head of food policy and climate change for Oxfam, stated “The main way that most people will experience climate change is through the impact on food: the food they eat, the price they pay for it, and the availability and choice that they have” (Goldenberg, 2014).

The story of food and climate change is not how the climate change story has been told. Historically, communication about climate change has adopted the traditional deficit model of communication, whereby experts share scientific information with lay audiences, with the intention to process that information meaningfully. However, ongoing research on climate change communication shows that many Americans need help with understanding or accepting the causes of climate change, and even more fail to understand when and how it will impact them (Leiserowitz et al., 2015). Thus, there is a critical need to engage people on a deeper level regarding the causes and risks associated with climate change in a way that connects with them beyond traditional means.

What Is Being Said About Food and Climate Change?

Given the relationship we have with food and the need for novel approaches to engage the public on climate change action, food seems like a logical choice for telling the climate change story. However, there is scant research on how the impacts of climate change on food affect people’s attitudes and behaviors. Research has identified several ways to engage the public on climate change, for example, through values and norms, but progress remains hindered by it being politicized and that it is still disputed by many. It is possible, however, to overcome these impediments by increasing the dialog about climate change and making the topic part of everyday conversations rather than something generally not discussed. Research also suggests that simply conversing about it leads to deeper engagement. Fortunately, food looks to be an excellent – though understudied – communication tool. It is personally relevant to everyone, relatively non-partisan, and encountered multiple times per day. This creates a unique opportunity for us to examine the effects of how messages about climate change and food affect attitudes and behavior outcomes.

Despite a lack of empirical evidence on food as an engagement tool for communicating climate change, there are some examples in the media and the gray literature on food and climate change. One of the more prevalent bodies of work is a collaborative project called the EAT-Lancet Commission. The EAT-Lacent Commission is a small group of global scientists working to establish a framework for meeting global nutritional needs while also limiting the environmental impacts our diet has on the planet. The report published in 2019 generated a lot of attention and has been cited 3542 times. The EAT-Lacent Commission presents a framework for diets that optimize human and planetary health, each tailored to country-specific needs. The framework, however, has come under significant criticism for promoting an unaffordable diet for a majority of global populations and only considers health outcomes in its recommendations for meat consumption, not climate or environmental outcomes. Similar organizations have published works promoting low-carbon diets, for example, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication published Climate Change and the American Diet in 2020. The report, consistent with the program’s previous work, provides data from a nationally representative survey about public perceptions of eating a plant-based diet and access to food (Leiserowitz et al., 2020). Lastly, Bill Hawken’s organization Project Drawdown (n.d.) discusses approaches to drawing down carbon emissions through individual and collective action. Food and diet are one of the methods of decreasing carbon emissions.

As discussions on food and climate change have begun to take precedence among the scientific community, mainstream media has also increased its attention on climate change’s impact on food. Using the Media Cloud (n.d.) explorer tool, an online database of media stories from 2015 to the present shows a small, but increasing trend of media coverage on climate change and food. In 2016, roughly 0.2% of all media stories in the United States mentioned the topic of food and climate change. Toward the end of 2021 and the start of 2022, the percentage of daily stories mentioning climate change and food is closer to 0.5% (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
A line graph denotes the percentage of stories covering food and climate change between 2016 and 2022. The line progresses with multiple fluctuations. It peaks between 2019 and 2020, which is more than 1%. It remains mostly above 0.5% between 2021 and 2022.

Media Cloud Explorer Query on daily media stories covering food and climate change (created January 10, 2022)

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Beyond media mentions of the topic of food and climate change, the home cook can explore an endless array of climate-friendly recipes. The New York Times, for example, has an entire online guide to climate-friendly cooking. Buzzfeed, the media outlet aimed toward younger audiences, provides low-carbon recipe ideas as well.

Small Strides in Effective Climate Change Communication

Issues about the environment encompass more than just presenting scientific evidence (of which there is an abundance). The examples in the previous section highlight in a small way how climate change has engendered a meek normative role in discussions about climate change. Communicating about climate change and the environment must examine more than just how people receive and interpret information. Hansen and Cox (2015) identify two key concerns the field of environmental communications should address: Environmental communication should “(a) improve our understanding of the cultures or locations in which such communication is produced and (b) strengthen the capacity of societies to deliberate and respond to conditions relevant to the well-being of both society and natural biological communities” (p. 15). Examining the history of environmental communication, however, demonstrates a failure to fully address these concerns.

A prime example is presented by Dunaway (2015), who highlights the ongoing pattern of depositing white bodies, especially children, as a universal symbol of vulnerability but masks the inequities people of color have endured when it comes to exposure to environmental hazards and pollutants. For example, the environmental justice movement’s launch stemmed from community outrage in Warren County, North Carolina (Bullard, 2001). People in the community learned that companies were illegally dumping polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), a chemical used as a coolant and in industrial processes, along the roads instead of designated landfill sites and began protesting the lack of community protection and governmental oversight. The protests led to a study by the US General Accounting Office, which looked at hazardous waste dumping sites and their correlation with the racial and economic status of communities near these landfills. The study revealed that three out of four commercial hazardous waste landfill sites among eight southern states were located in communities that were predominantly African American (Bullard, 2001).

This pattern further extends into the world of food and food access. Many areas that are economically disadvantaged and have a high concentration of minorities tend to have less access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. These areas are widely known as “food deserts” (USDA, 2015) and are attributed to “supermarket redlining” (Eisenhauer, 2001). Supermarket redlining refers to the relocation of supermarkets away from urban areas to more profitable suburban areas (Eisehauer, 2001). Larger supermarket chains left urban and rural areas, areas that also happen to have greater levels of economically disadvantaged residents, for areas perceived to have fewer obstacles. Obstacles include higher property costs, labor costs, and utilities, as well as higher rates of crime and lower demand for perishable items (Zhang & Debarchana, 2016). Despite the abundance of food available in the United States and other wealthier countries, for millions of people, access to healthy, affordable food remains out of reach.

The main methods of climate change and environmental communication not only present environmental issues from one perspective but also further assume that we all experience environmental damage the same way, thereby obscuring environmental injustices experienced across populations, cultures, and societies. The failure to consider multiple voices in climate change and environmental communication is further compounded by the focus on individual responsibility in environmental campaigns. By focusing on individual actions, we ignore the actions of corporations and governments (Dunaway, 2015; Webb, 2012). Over the last 60 years, the emphasis on individual responsibility has been the dominant lens through which governments and organizations communicate about the environment and climate change, thereby failing to address strengthening capacity for societies as a whole.

Behavior Change Efforts Through Communication

With the emphasis on individual responsibility, large efforts were put forth to increase climate literacy and change the attitudes held by the public about environmentally friendly behaviors. The dominant approaches to tackling climate literacy and behavior change were based on norm theories (Cialdini, 2003; Schultz et al., 2007; White & Simpson, 2013), values-based models (Crompton, 2010; Stern, 2000; Thøgersen & Crompton, 2009), and economic incentives or nudges (Corner & Randall, 2011; Kristal & Whillans, 2020). Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach to promoting environmentally friendly behavior, there are significant barriers to overcome when trying to inform people about the impacts of climate change and encourage changes in behavior. Barriers to behavior change include social conformity, identity conflicts, moral and ethical concerns, habits, conflicting interpersonal goals, lack of perceived control or feelings of helplessness, and construal-level concerns.

Moser (2016) describes not just how environmental communication has worked, but more importantly, she highlights what needs to change moving forward, what has worked, and what has not. It is essential to understand that environmental and climate communication approaches should be context and audience-specific. But generally speaking, Moser concludes that the field of climate communication in practice needs to do more than educate people; it needs to empower people with appropriate actions to take. We also need to utilize more diverse and nontraditional communication channels, especially since mainstream media still presents climate change as a debate, and usually, it is a debate with Bill Nye. There is also a need to connect with broader social movements, given that the issue of climate change touches every aspect of human life. There is a need to embed climate change discourse in other forms of culture, such as literature, art, music, and theater. We need to move away from fear toward building hope and optimism to empower people to take action. And we must find ways to overcome some of the tensions between scientific practice and disseminating actionable policies.

How to Increase Support for Climate Change Action?

From the literature, three factors are helpful to consider for motivating greater engagement and action among the public with climate change (Sheppard, 2015). The first is to make the issue local. Making climate change more salient and immediate by pulling it into a community context that people care about and using the local landscape to express climate change issues and focus action are argued to promote more comprehensive action. The second factor is to make climate change visual. Harnessing the power of visual perception and imagery in producing concepts and realities of climate change and carbon, both explicit and compelling, helps people see climate change. Lastly, make climate change connected holistically with the big picture of climate change, integrating all aspects of climate change that interact with society and affected environments across scales. The challenge here is determining methods of communication that achieve or fulfill each of these goals. Food, although not widely applied within research, fits these three approaches.

A shift needs to happen, where climate change communication needs to adopt methods that cut through the psychological and social barriers to increased action. There is a need for novel approaches to make climate change and its impacts resonate more strongly with audiences, locally, visually, and holistically. Bolsen and Shapiro (2018) suggest that narratives on climate change need to be reframed so that evidence does not threaten or directly contradict an audience’s existing opinions and worldviews. New narratives further need to convey the extent of scientific consensus on climate change causes and solutions while promoting efficacy to prevent further impacts of climate change. Stories need to encourage the accuracy of foundational climate science and new information to minimize the spread of disinformation and rely on credible spokespeople to share the story. Traditional methods of storytelling are one approach that could not only increase awareness of climate change impacts and action. Still, they could do so in a way that engenders local, visual, and holistic approaches.

When it comes to identifying a method for engaging in large-scale action on climate, two human activities both unify and connect us, storytelling and food. The remainder of this chapter will outline the connections between storytelling, food, and climate change as a method for raising awareness and spurring climate action. Both food and storytelling build relationships between people. Both stories and food evoke cross-cultural, political, social, and psychological boundaries, which build bonds and unite people.

Much of what is communicated about climate change reflects temperature, precipitation, sea-level rise, and storms. These impacts are rarely connected to an individual. Food, however, is something everyone can identify. There are memories, emotions, and images associated with food. Ask anyone to think about their favorite food, and it generates a complex response. Beyond providing a basic level of nutrition, food is connected more broadly to our overall health and well-being. Block et al. (2011; p. 6) define food well-being as “a positive psychological, physical, emotional, and social relationship with food at both the individual and societal levels.” Applying food well-being as a framework extends our relationship with food across other disciplines, where food transcends a purely utilitarian function and engenders aspects of a community, kinship, comfort, and pleasure (Block et al., 2011).

Moreover, food carries symbolic meanings as we both consume and share it, physically and digitally, via social media (Kozinets et al., 2017; McDonnell, 2016; Wallendorf & Arnould, 1991). Food is simultaneously material and symbolic, connecting producers and consumers with various physical, social, and cultural meanings (McDonnell, 2016). Those who share food photos invite the public into another world, an aspirational world of travel and exotic flavors. Additionally, sharing a meal either physically or virtually promotes an inclusive space that fosters a sense of belonging and shared experience while also providing sustenance. The materiality of food overcomes the aspects of physical and psychological distance. The sharing of food breaks down opposing values and attitudes through inclusive experiences (Eiseman, 2019; McDonnell, 2016).

Lastly, within the international community, people have a right to access food, and governments should limit the barriers to individuals’ sustenance access (Dumas, 2010). Food production is intrinsically linked to climate and environmental conditions. Therefore, failure to act on climate change inhibits individuals’ right to food. The right to food is a moral, ethical, and political imperative to ensure the global climate remains viable for food production. Ensuring equitable food production and distribution maintains the overall well-being and freedoms of a population.

Connecting Food to the Art of Storytelling

Just as food is a part of our everyday life, so too is storytelling. We tell stories every day and experience this phenomenon from a very young age (Alda, 2017). The story or narrative structure helps us understand the world around us and our place within it (Arnold, 2018). Examine the social and cultural components of storytelling to increase the human connection to what is happening globally and locally. Stories told as narratives are linear and share a sequence of events in terms of a beginning, middle, and end. Furthermore, narratives provide a structure such as suspense, tragedy, or comedy to convey a lesson (Shanahan et al., 1999).

Storytelling is one technique that has been shown to overcome challenges policymakers and practitioners face when trying to gain support for proactive resilience planning and climate action. The vivid imagery conveyed within a narrative taps into people’s enduring memories, shared experiences, and sensations, while further informing listeners of how to negotiate similar situations (Goodchild et al., 2017; Shanahan et al., 1999). These sensations align with the emotive, social, psychological, and physical relationship we have with food. Thus, using food to tell the climate change story could be an effective way to scale up climate change action. Scientists often share information about climate change by providing facts and figures. However, people tend to assess technical knowledge within the whole of their worldviews and beliefs as opposed to rational thought (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981).

Additionally, Bednarek (2021) argues that the “divided brain” or the dual hemispheric structure of the brain results in many people’s ability to carry on with everyday tasks while ignoring overwhelming information. The trauma theory of structural dissociation (Van der Hart et al., 2006) suggests, in times of stress, the left side of the brain can take over and allow an individual to continue in daily tasks. When the left side of the brain takes over, a person is able to stay positive and focused, while the right side of the brain interacts with the world in a contextual way. When the right side of the brain takes over, an individual can relate to the natural world and see life as more complex and interconnected (Bednarek, 2021). Thus, creating a narrative about climate change instead of facts and figures appeals to or activates multiple forms of information processing, resulting in a deeper understanding and holistic perspective of an issue. Given the challenges climate change poses (e.g., a wicked problem, existential problem, catastrophic problem), those who encourage action against climate change could benefit from a narrative approach. Stories can help because of the connections they forge between people and between people and ideas. Stories help to convey culture, history, and goals that unite communities. Stories help us learn from our mistakes; they turn failures into victories, into ways forward. Stories can create a culture of compassion, reminding us that we are all human.

Telling the Story of Climate Change Through Food

Telling a story is more than simply telling a story. Following the traditional narrative approach, a story should have a beginning, middle, and end. However, it should include the human element, some flair, or some emotion. Stories should be descriptive, so those listening can feel like they are walking in the storyteller’s shoes. Ultimately, the audience should see the world through the storyteller’s eyes. Although storytelling and eating are two things that we are all familiar with, it is helpful to have some parameters in producing stories, particularly about climate change and food. The following example provides an illustrative example of the impact storytelling has and how food and climate change can be integrated into a workshop with community groups to develop new and shared meanings. The outline was created in partnership with a local storytelling group, Trampoline. The guide below helps facilitate a public storytelling workshop for climate change engagement.

Using Food to Tell the Climate Change Story

A case has been made to use food to tell the climate change story, and Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need by Hoffmann et al. (2021) is one of the first major publications to advance this approach. The book is intended for a general audience along with its complementary website, Our Changing Menu (ourchangingmenu.com). The website’s story is like the books but also includes a searchable database of potentially hundreds of food ingredients and how they are changing.

At the heart of the story is a menu that ventures from before-dinner drinks to desserts and describes the changes underway. Wakeup calls include the escalating risks to our food system but also increasing risks to chocolate, vanilla, and spuds; how flavors and aromas are changing; and how the loss of glacial meltwaters in Peru will affect blueberry availability to North America. The story also helps people to appreciate where their food comes from and the challenges it faces on the way to their table, understand the basics of climate change, and how the plants we depend on for life are being changed. This story also emphasizes solutions, such as what farmers, scientists, food businesses, and others are doing and, most importantly, what everyone can do. The number of stories to be told and the audiences are unlimited.

The story is not all doom and gloom, and there are no villains. It draws attention to climate change through food, offers solutions, and offers hope. We are all in this together, and through the common ground of the food, the goal is to catalyze a climate change social movement that brings about the transformations needed in every sector of society.

Climate Change and the Future of the Hamburger

The following is an example of how the climate change and food story can be told using the hamburger.

We tell a climate change and food story by visually portraying how climate change changes the menu using the culturally iconic hamburger, one of the world’s most widely consumed meals. Using images and a narrated script, we describe the changes underway to this beloved meal. We believe this unique visual approach will affect people’s emotions about how their foods are at increasing risk because of climate change and challenge all of us to take action to save our favorite foods and humanity as well.

Our story is part of a postgraduate research-led initiative from the Centre for Cultural Ecologies in Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield Graduate School, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK. We created digitally curated story about the hamburger which is one of many exhibitions at Climate Action and Visual Culture (Mateescu, 2021). The script below was complemented with images of the various components of a hamburger.

What’s happening to your favorite foods? The answer might surprise you.

We see and hear about how climate change is causing glaciers to melt, more extreme weather, and heat waves, but what about closer to home? A changing climate doesn’t just mean a change in our wardrobe and energy bills, it means a change in the conditions in which our food is grown. Water, soil, temperatures, and the composition of the air are all changing and affecting the food plants we depend on for life. This encompasses staples like wheat and rice to the spices that flavor the foods we love, need, and eat several times each day. It’s all changing, in subtle and ominous ways. We’ll tell this story by showing what’s happening to a hamburger.

The tart in pickles.

Pickles are tart because they are soaked in vinegar to get “pickled.” And vinegar is made by fermenting grains such as corn and barley. Globally, grains are under stress because of climate change, and the impacts will vary by region. For example, corn production in the USA is predicted to decline by 20% (Berlin et al., n.d.) and barley by 8–25% in the Mediterranean region (Cammarano et al., 2019) depending on the intensity of climate change.

Stressed but maybe sweeter tomatoes.

When it’s too hot, tomato plants produce fewer fruit, and the tomatoes get sunburned and can be small in size. But when grown under higher levels of the greenhouse carbon dioxide expected in the future, they may be sweeter and have more vitamin C (Bisbis et al., 2018).

Onions may taste different.

Like many other vegetables, onions don’t do well when it’s too hot. But interestingly enough, higher temperatures can also make them more pungent (Coolong & Randle, 2003). If you like a strong onion, you might like this change.

Lettuce’s ups and downs.

On the positive side, lettuce yields increase by over 40% when grown under higher levels of carbon dioxide, which is expected in the coming decades (Korres et al., 2016). In other good news, in regions where winters are already mild, lettuce might be grown over winter and provide a year-round supply as winters continue to warm (Bisbis et al., 2018). One challenge for lettuce, however, is if it gets too warm the lettuce plant sends up a flower stalk and develops seeds. This results in a strong and bitter taste, making the plant unmarketable. The tips of the leaves may also turn brown when it is too hot.

Cheese is changing too.

The thousands of kinds of cheese we enjoy are generally not yet being directly threatened by climate change, but cows are. When hot, they produce less milk (Wolfe et al., 2008). They also contribute to climate change by producing methane gas, but changing their diets can help reduce these emissions (Woodward et al., 2004).

Treating red meat as a delicacy.

Beef is essential to the lives of many people around the globe, but in rich countries, consumption of red meat often exceeds dietary recommendations. Also, consider that beef generates about 50 times more greenhouse gas emissions than wheat to produce an ounce of protein (Clark & Tilman, 2017). The plant-based meat substitutes are growing in popularity and also come with a lower greenhouse gas footprint (Peters, 2019). It’s time that we consider reducing our consumption of red meat, and one approach is to consider it a delicacy and not a staple. This burger looks like a meaty hamburger, but it’s meatless.

Higher nighttime temperatures cause stunted spuds.

In 2018, the British chip (almost like a French fry) was an inch shorter than normal because of climate change (Carrington, 2019). Increases in nighttime temperature alone could undermine global potato production (International Potato Center, 2013). Under a business-as-usual scenario, researchers estimate up to 95% of English and Welsh potato-growing land will become unsuitable for production by 2050 because of increasingly dry conditions (Daccache et al., 2012).

And then there is the bun.

Things are changing for the wheat in this burger bun. Some experts indicate that if we don’t curb climate change, by the end of the century, much of the world’s area used for wheat production will be simultaneously affected by severe water scarcity (Trnka et al., 2019). In the USA, impacts are expected to be modest with wheat grown over winter at higher latitudes actually benefiting (Crane-Droesch et al., 2019).

Sesame seeds too.

Africa is the source of 40% of the world’s sesame, and climate change is making conditions there drier and hotter. Fortunately, the sesame plant is tolerant of these stressful conditions meaning that production could expand and become an important source of income for small-scale farmers in some regions (Dossa et al., 2017).

Ketchup.

Ketchup is typically made from processing tomatoes, most of which are grown in California where 11 million tons are produced each year. Processing tomatoes is expected to be in adequate supply until late in the century when production is predicted to drop by about 10% (Lee et al., 2011). The increasing threat of drought in California could create challenges well before the end of the century, however.

Does the burger have a future?

Yes! Scientists worldwide are working hard to develop more climate-hardy crops and farmers are changing how they grow crops to ensure that we have the wheat, potatoes, onions, and sesame seeds we love and need.

Find out what else is changing and how you can help at www.ourchangingmenu.com.

Conclusion

Scaling up rapid action for climate change requires various approaches to appeal to multiple audiences. Telling the story of climate change through food is one way to raise awareness about climate change and motivate people to take action to mitigate the future impacts of a changing climate. In this chapter, we outlined the current state of the environmental communication field. We introduced food and storytelling as a method for overcoming some of the existing barriers to broader engagement with climate change action. Lastly, we provided an illustrative example of how individuals can carry out a storytelling workshop and its effects on participants and how to apply these concepts to food and climate change. After all, everyone eats!