The sustainability of convenience food: a review and design research agenda

Convenience foods have wide-reaching impacts on various areas of sustainability. However, research typically focuses on environmental issues, often overlooking other sustainability issues. Design research, specifically Food-to-Go design research, focuses solely on specific environmental behaviours, such as users’ packaging use, food waste, and overall circular behaviours regarding food. This study aims to define areas of Food-to-Go-style convenience foods that have a significant correlation with human issues, to develop a future design research agenda that looks at and integrates the variety of sustainability issues associated with Food-to-Go. The study accomplishes this through a literature review and meta-analysis synthesising the various impacts of convenience food across areas, such as environmental sustainability, human health, and sociological studies of food consumption. This paper concludes that although current research includes many of the areas mentioned above, there is also a previously unidentified opportunity for psychological wellbeing investigation.