Sustainability in Nutrition: Potential Guiding Statements for Education and Practice

Abstract

Objective: To explore and synthesize local and practice-based perspectives of sustainability to develop a set of proposed guiding thematic statements that will assist academics to contextualize, prioritize, and integrate sustainability-focused activities or a sustainability lens in a nutrition and dietetic (N&D) program. Design: Participatory action research process using an online survey, workshop, and interviews. Setting: Australian Regional University. Participants: A total of 95 N&D undergraduate students, 7 N&D academics, and 10 Australian nutrition practitioners. Phenomenon of Interest: Sustainability in N&D learning, teaching, and practice. Analysis: Qualitative inductive content analysis of responses from each participant group and combined themes. Results: There were 4 key themes, each comprising 4–8 subthemes, identified as follows: sustainability thinking, future-focused views, stewardship, and sustaining the nutrition profession. Conclusions and Implications: There may be opportunities for N&D competencies in Australia to better reflect the ways of being that sustainability in nutrition practice means. Confirmation of these findings among other N&D professionals (academics and practitioners) and students, both in Australia and elsewhere, is warranted to further develop these proposed statements. Future research is needed to describe more explicitly what sustainability looks like in practice, providing specific examples to assist educators to frame sustainability authentically.