11 What are Some Ways to Integrate SFS Into Practice?
D-N practitioners work in diverse areas of the food system, and play a crucial role in helping shape the food system and sustainability, specifically dietary patterns and health. To remind yourself of the components of a healthy and sustainable dietary pattern, read Chapter 4 What is a Healthy and Sustainable Dietary Pattern?
Practitioners can take many different approaches to integrate sustainability into practice. For example, they commonly help to shape individual dietary patterns, which make up population-level dietary patterns, and these patterns have a considerable impact on sustainability.
While D-N practitioners have an essential role in making food systems more sustainable, it is vital to collaborate with professionals from multiple disciplines, sectors, and communities. As shaping a sustainable food system can be a substantial, systemic and complex task, working collaboratively can lead to more effective and significant solutions.
There are a number of strategies emerging in the peer reviewed and grey literature that hold promise, which means that they are being used by, or contributed to by nutrition and dietetics professionals and the theoretical and/or empirical data is strong for potential outcomes that are at least proportionate to the effort, if not more. These include activities like nutrition warning labels, taxes on sugar sweetened beverages, institutional food policies, and strong food literacy programming. Like most behaviour change models, they are strongest if they are guided by a food systems perspective, and cohesive across many levels of the social system.
To review what a food systems perspective means, review Chapter 2 What are Food Systems?
The socioecological framework helps to envision cohesion across human social systems and includes the following:
- Political and cultural environments such as culture, policy, social, and physical infrastructure.
- Physical Environments such as where people eat, prepare, and access food.
- Social Environments such as family, friends, and communities.
- Individual factors such as knowledge, skills, motivation, and self-efficacy.
Learning Activities
11.1 Read
In this section, we encourage you to read Seven Strategies for Advancing Sustainable Dietary Patterns: Leverage Points for Nutrition and Dietetics Professionals [PDF].
The Seven Strategies for Advancing Sustainable Dietary Patterns: Leverage Points for Nutrition and Dietetics Professionals[1], synthesises the peer reviewed evidence and grey literature to outline seven evidence-based leverage points for D-N practitioners, providing them with guidance to make food systems more sustainable. They are fiscal drivers, Front-of-Pack Food Labelling, Institutional Food Policies, Catering at Institutions, Retail-Level Marketing, Communication and Social Marketing, and Food Literacy. This list is by no means comprehensive, but rather guided by practical application to nutrition and dietetics.
Read the introductory pages 4-10 and then choose one of the seven strategies/high-leverage actions that is most relevant to your practice or interests you the most. (~30 minute read)
- Fiscal Drivers (pages 11-13)
- Front-of-Pack Food Labelling (pages 14-16)
- Institutional Food Policies (pages 17-19)
- Catering at Institutions (pages 20-21)
- Retail-Level Marketing (pages 22-23)
- Communication and Social Marketing (pages 24-25)
- Food Literacy (pages 26-28)
Next, read the summary graphic below. This graphic summarises the actions and examples from the seven strategies. (~10 minute read) 
Seven Strategies for Advancing Sustainable Dietary Patterns: Leverage Points for Nutrition and Dietetics Professionals – Summary Graphic
11.2 Reflect
After reading introductory pages 4-10, reflect using the following questions (~20 minutes):
- Describe the two system theories used to justify the seven strategies. Use words appropriate as if you are explaining it to a colleague or classmate.
- What do each of the theories add to help understand the strategy, and how are they useful together?
After reading one of the seven strategies and the summary graphic, reflect using the following:
- Choose two to three examples of ways that food systems are unsustainable and impacting nutritional health in your area. What solutions do you see that offer synergistic improvements in nutrition and sustainability?
- What will encourage decision-makers in your organisation or community to see the value of providing healthy and sustainable food?
- Which of the seven strategies relates most to your current or future practice, and what are the steps you need to take to implement it?
- What are ways that you can support policy (remembering that policy can exist at many levels, from personal to public) that support sustainable food systems (including dietary
11.3 Extend Your Learning
If you wish to deepen your understanding, explore the following:
The following resources are organised based on each of the seven strategies, with one resource per strategy:
- Resource from the World Health Organisation for implementing fiscal policies: Implementing fiscal and pricing policies to promote healthy diets: a review of contextual factors available online.
- Global Food Research Program has put together a front-of-package labelling fact sheet to learn about the different kinds and best practices for front-of-package labelling. Front-of-package labelling available online.
- Scoping review on local urban government policies implemented to facilitate healthy and environmentally sustainable diet-related practices. Local urban government policies to facilitate healthy and environmentally sustainable diet-related practices: a scoping review available online.
- Resource for more sustainable menu development: A Guide to Sustainable Menus: A Step-by-Step Approach to Sustainability [PDF].
- EIT Food created a resource to make sustainable food consumption mainstream. SUCCESS for making sustainable consumption mainstream is available online.
- Learn more about food choice-related behaviour by reading A menu for a change. A Menu for Change is available online.
- Nouris NS offers numerous resources to promote food literacy and safety among children. Food Literacy and Safety Resources are available online.
Media Attributions
- Socioecological Systems Impacting Dietary Patterns © Tracey O'Neil
- Summary Graphic © Tracey O'Neil
- Carlsson, L., Wegener, J., Everitt, T., Srinivasan, S., Engel, K. (2025). Seven Strategies for Advancing Sustainable Dietary Patterns: Leverage Points for Nutrition and Dietetics Professionals. Report. Acadia University, Toronto Metropolitan University, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada. ↵
We recognize our audience is a combination of all protected terms and therefore are using the title Dietitian-Nutritionist as per ICDA’s definition: “A Dietitian-Nutritionist is a professional who applies the science of food and nutrition to promote health, prevent and treat disease to optimise the health of individuals, groups, communities and populations.” -ICDA, 2014
Food systems are complex, non-linear, systems that “… that embrace all the elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructure, institutions, markets and trade) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution and marketing, preparation and consumption of food and the outputs of these activities, including socio-economic and environmental outcomes.” — Dietitians of Canada, 2020
