Bridging Data, Lived Experiences, and Policy through Food and Eating: Reconfiguring the Policy Co-creation Landscape for More Just Transitions

Despite efforts to engage civil society, local policy implementation often produces unforeseen impacts that authorities struggle to address. This article introduces a methodological approach that uses food as a culturally resonant medium for co-creating data representations. The aim is to bring lived experience of civil society actors into policy processes, in ways that are as rich as the experiences themselves. Drawing on organizational studies and stakeholder collaboration, we examine the challenge of integrating diverse perspectives in governing wicked problems. To test the method, we conducted an experimental workshop on sustainability transitions in Sweden’s Gulf of Bothnia, bringing together professional fishers, public authorities, chefs, and researchers. Participants co-created and shared a meal that represented fishers’ lived experience of a specific policy tension. This embodied sensory process fostered trust, dialogue, and mutual understanding—reconfiguring stakeholder relationships through ritual and commensality. The method surfaced critical, often-overlooked forms of knowledge, translating abstract policies into tangible experience and contributing to the emergence of affective commons—a shared atmosphere of engagement and sense-making. Our findings show that food can disrupt conventional expertise, flatten hierarchies, and support inclusive, evidence-based decision-making. This approach offers a compelling pathway toward more just and participatory sustainability governance. • For future-making to be meaningful, it requires deep engagement with the present. • Embodied engagement with the material stakes of a situation can be transformational. • Preparing and sharing food can open space to engage divergent views and envision new futures. • Using food as proxy for data evokes experiential narratives and enables powerful sustainability and policy interventions.