The impact of COVID-19 on alternative and local food systems and the potential for the sustainability transition: Insights from 13 countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major stress test for the agri-food system. While most research has analysed the impact of the pandemic on mainstream food systems, this article examines how alternative and local food systems (ALFS) in 13 countries responded in the first months of the crisis. Using primary and secondary data and combining the Multi-Level Perspective with social innovation approaches, we highlight the innovations and adaptations that emerged in ALFS, and how these changes have created or supported the sustainability transition in production and consumption systems. In particular, we show how the combination of social and technological innovation, greater citizen involvement, and the increased interest of policy-makers and retailers have enabled ALFS to extend their scope and engage new actors in more sustainable practices. Finally, we make recommendations concerning how to support ALFS' upscaling to embrace the opportunities arising from the crisis and strengthen the sustainability transition.

Diet and public health campaigns: Implementation and appropriation of nutritional recommendations in France and Luxembourg.

Based on two surveys - a French and a Luxembourgish one - with in-depth-interviews, this article examines the implementation of nutritional recommendations in two European countries. Each of them has promoted at governmental level a public health campaign regarding food consumption and daily diet. In which way - and by which social categories - are the recommendations taken in and put into practice, and if so, which appropriation processes and interpretations occur? Do the social, societal and cultural differences between Luxembourg and France (as well as within them), in terms of standard of living and dissemination of norms account for differentiated appropriations of dietary incentives? We will first compare the overarching goals as well as the dietary norms these two programs promote, in terms of similarities versus particularities both of the recommendations' content and of the way they are communicated. We will then examine the perception of these norms. The comparison France / Luxembourg shows that socio-cultural logics override national ones: the way in which individuals perceive the recommendations and appropriate them reflect more the social affiliation than the national one; gender and the events of the life cycle, particularly parentality, are also relevant to the reception of dietary recommendations. Transversal to all social milieus and in both national contexts, interviewees operate a selective internalisation of the perceived recommendations in a proactive yet pragmatic posture of personal responsibility. Ultimately, public dietary recommendations are only appropriated if they match people's daily priorities and constraints, as well as the general cultural values of their social milieu. This allows us to conclude to transnational, transversal, plural and distinctive everyday-cultural models of food consumption and differing notions of a "proper" diet.