This decade, the word ‘Sustainable’ seems to be the most popular word used in almost everything from the exterior portion of a food packaging, to government master plan, and even as the main agenda/title in a food related conference.
But what is actually the meaning of ‘Sustainable’ ? In the food and beverage space, it refers to doing business without negatively impacting the environment and society while at the same time offers positive benefits in terms of safer and healthier food products to consumers. Unfortunately, many of us seems to emit ‘affordability’ as part of being sustainable. But to many consumers, i.e. to over 3 billion people in the world representing almost half (42%) of the world’s population, access to sustainable processed food products are almost impossible as they could not even afford a healthy diet. The World Bank reported that in 2021, the global average daily cost of a healthy diet in current purchasing power parities was US$3.66. In low-income countries, the average cost was US$3.37, while in high-income countries it was slightly higher at US$3.43. Unfortunately, these healthy diet costs are much higher than the current international poverty line of US$2.15 a day.
