Transforming the normal towards sustainable future food consumption

This PhD project investigates how affluent food consumption practices change over time from the perspective of eating out in the Netherlands. It is part of the NWA project "Transition to a Sustainable Food System" (2018-2025) and the EU4Advice project on short food supply chains. Drawing on three empirical studies of restaurants and consumers, it conceptualises normalisation as a dynamic and contested process rather than a linear pathway to change. The first study traces the historical normalisation of culinary diversity through ethnic restaurants, challenging normative understandings of normalisation in Social Practice Theory. The second study examines how local-oriented restaurants mobilise normative futures around sustainable diets, interrogating how such normativity facilitates societal change. The third study shifts perspective to consumers, analysing how plant-based eating out is experienced and negotiated in everyday life. Together, the thesis develops a temporal and actor-sensitive framework for understanding normalisation in affluent societies.