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Introduction
An increasing number of universities and colleges across North America are adopting sustainability-related changes (Brinkhurst et al. , 2011; Levy and Marans, 2012), including the achievement of a range of environmental, health and ethical objectives through campus food procurement and dining hall services (Chen et al. , 2011). Understanding how university students perceive the environmental implications of their food and other choices is a key first step in developing effective approaches to help students think about and tackle sustainability issues across campus (Emanuel and Adams, 2011; Wilkins et al. , 2000). In this study, focus group discussions and a survey were used to explore the connections that students make between their food-related choices and the environment, as well as what actions they believe could be adopted to ameliorate the negative environmental outcomes associated with modern food consumption practices. A secondary focus of this study was to identify the contribution of gender and social psychological factors, i.e. envirocentric value orientation and worldview, to an individual's food-related environmental beliefs and behaviours.
Previous research suggests that there are strong links between the modern food system and a range of negative environmental outcomes, such as climate change, habitat loss and degradation of aquatic ecosystems. In North America and Europe, in particular, negative environmental outcomes have been established for a number of different food production and consumption practices. Evidence is accumulating that modern animal production (mainly meat and dairy) is particularly detrimental to the health of the environment. Emissions of nitrous oxides and methane from animal waste, as well as fossil fuel-dependent feed crops, account for approximately 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Steinfeld and Wassenaar, 2007). In addition, intensive animal production has been associated with the destruction of forest and grassland habitats in South America for the purposes of growing feed crops and grazing (Naylor et al. , 2005; Cederberg et al. , 2011), as well as the degradation of freshwater and marine ecosystems as a result of runoff from confined animal operations (Burkholder et al. , 2007).
Processed foods have similarly been criticized, primarily as a result of the energy and resources required for production relative to whole, seasonal foods (Carlsson-Kanyama et al. , 2003; Pelletier et al. , 2011; Garnett, 2011); similar...