Between lifestyle and the politics of sustainability

Instigated by climate change and environmental challenges, consumption of food and drinks has become an arena increasingly entrenched with identity and ethics. In this article, we examine the contested field of plant-based milk alternatives to consider how the cultural and discursive meanings of plant-based milk alternatives are represented in news media in relation to climate and environmental sustainability. Our theoretical point of departure is political discourse theory combined with sociocultural theories of consumption, and we apply these perspectives to our empirical data, consisting of 340 news articles from Danish newspapers across five years (2019 – 2023). The analysis shows a dislocation of the hegemonic understanding of what healthy and sustainable food is. Significantly, this takes place within a discourse of lifestyle where identity is negotiated as tensions in food culture.