Food consumption dynamics among the urban middle classes in South and Southeast Asia

Abstract:

A series of six short films are presented based on the research project '(Un) Sustainable Food Consumption Dynamics in South/Southeast Asia: Changing patterns, practices and policies among “new consumers" in India and the Philippines’. These films are curated along the life cycle of food (starting with agriculture, moving to distribution, preparation (including cooking) and then finally to food waste, its treatment and disposal). Curating these films in a life-cycle configuration illustrates life-cycle thinking/assessment as an important concept in understanding flows and stocks of resources. These films highlight growing organic food, changing cuisines, managing food stock in the home, eating out and managing and treating food waste.

These films were made by Helena Ziherl and Reto Steffen from the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS). They are available on http://foodconsumption.snis.ch/ and YouTube. This project was funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) and co-coordinated by the University of Lausanne and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, both in Switzerland. Research on which these films are based was done by the following (arranged alphabetically based on first names): Abby Favis, Christine Camata, Christine Lutringer, Czarina Saloma, Gopal Karanth, Laura Burger Chakraborty, Loïc Leray, Lorraine Mangaser, Malavika Belavangala, Marlyne Sahakian (Co-coordinator), Megha Shenoy, Shalini Randeria (Co-coordinator), Sunayana Ganguly, Suren Erkman (Coordinator), Tiphaine Leuzinger, Uma Rani.

Brief bio:

Megha Shenoy in an Adjunct Fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. She is currently conducting a project to examine and apply knowledge from the urban waste segregation system in Bangalore to waste recycling/treatment in the other parts of the World e.g., Vancouver in Canada, Chengdu in China. She is also on editorial team of the Journal of Industrial Ecology.

Megha has been working in the area of industrial ecology after she completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Industrial Ecology, Yale University, USA. She was the research director of the Resource Optimization Initiative in Bangalore and a freelance industrial ecologist. Projects she has worked on have looked at ways to:

· implement industrial symbiosis or industrial waste exchange networks,
· examine material flow analysis in urban areas for water and extended polystyrene,
· create life cycle inventories,
· review life cycle assessment studies to measure environmental impacts.

She completed an Integrated PhD at the Indian Institute of Science where she examined plant-invertebrate interactions in the Western Ghats.