Bridging sustainability and health: the role of food literacy in shaping eating practices

The growing global population, environmental challenges, and unsustainable consumption habits have heightened the importance of sustainable food consumption. While sustainable food literacy (SFL) is recognized for fostering healthy eating and ecological awareness, holistic and empirically robust studies on its multifaceted impact remain limited. This study aims to examine the effect of sustainable food literacy on individuals’ sustainable and healthy eating behaviors.

A quantitative research method was employed, and data were collected from 204 participants via an online survey. The data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) implemented in SmartPLS 4. Sustainable food literacy was operationalized as a second-order construct based on the Turkish adaptation of Teng and Chih’s (2022) instrument, in which the knowledge domain is represented by conceptual and practical knowledge components.

The findings indicate that sustainable food literacy has a significant positive impact on sustainable and healthy eating behavior. Furthermore, sustainable food literacy was found to significantly influence behavioral subdimensions, including healthy and balanced eating, reading food quality labels, choosing local foods, preferring low-fat foods, and expressing concern for animal welfare. These results offer actionable insights for targeted policy and educational interventions, moving beyond general recommendations to address specific behavioral facets that promote responsible food consumption and public health.

Beyond food and health research, this study contributes to the broader behavioral change literature by demonstrating that literacy functions as a proximal determinant, translating sustainability-related knowledge and attitudes into everyday consumption behavior. By linking individual food literacy to sustainable and healthy eating practices, this study also informs systems-oriented perspectives on sustainability transitions, where aggregate consumer behavior plays a critical role in shaping food systems. Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Department, Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul, Turkey Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Department, Kocaeli University, İzmit, Turkey Kadir Yavuz, Dilek Dülger Altıner & Selda Uca Karacabey Tourism Management Department, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey Correspondence to Demet Genceli or Selda Uca Karacabey.

The authors declare no competing interests. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Kocaeli University (Approval ID: 2025/03, E-94094268-020-7528602021-12-001; Decision No. 24; Date: March 21, 2025). The online survey was conducted from March 22, 2025, to May 10, 2025.

All procedures were performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, the Council of Higher Education (Yükseköğretim Kurulu – YÖK, Turkey), and relevant institutional and international ethical guidelines (institutional: Kocaeli University’s Social Sciences Ethics Committee). Mine HALİS chaired the Ethics Committee, overseeing and signing the approval. The online survey was administered to 204 volunteers.