Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Sustainable agrifood transitions are often framed through the need for consumers to make better choices: reducing meat consumption, avoiding waste, trusting labels, supporting responsible producers, and aligning everyday food practices with environmental and ethical concerns. Yet such expectations are enacted within food systems marked by unequal access, opaque claims, conflicting responsibilities, and social pressures. This article examines how individuals remain ethically engaged with sustainable food consumption under conditions of inconsistency, compromise, and constraint. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 20 women who had completed formal mindfulness and self-compassion-based training, and using reflexive thematic analysis, the study develops the concept of imperfect sustainability. Six themes were identified: learning to notice food differently, food as an ethical relationship, living with imperfect sustainability, negotiating sustainability with others, living within imperfect food systems, and sustainability as ethical identity. The findings show that sustainable food consumption was not experienced as a stable achievement or checklist of correct behaviours, but as a lived, relational, embodied, and emotionally demanding practice. Imperfect sustainability describes a form of ethical engagement that remains partial, situated, and constrained, yet continues to reflect responsibility rather than abandonment. By shifting attention from behavioural consistency to ethical continuity, the article contributes to food ethics and just agrifood transition debates by showing how responsibility, trust, care, and resilience are negotiated at the consumer end of imperfect food systems.</p>