Project

PLanetary health diets & cooking

FOOD FOR THE WELL-BEING OF HUMANS AND OUR PLANET  

SchoolFood4Change (SF4C) aims to motivate, support and enable schools to provide meals that are innovative, climate-friendly, healthy, delicious, zero-waste and reflect local identity – a long list. How can we make sure that all these requirements are fulfilled at the same time?

Thanks for the food! It’s time for a new menu.

What we eat has always evolved and school food is no exception. Like all food, school food is something to be valued and cherished. Especially when there are still so many areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food and hunger is so widespread. And let’s not forget that school food is always produced, sourced and made by someone. And this someone deserves a thank you – and maybe even sometimes, a friendly reminder to spice it up from time to time. We are thankful for what has been achieved so far and now want to take school food to a whole new level.  

School food is always served to benefit schoolchildren. But today’s school food system has its limitations: available budgets and resources, regulations and contractual requirements can limit the scope of action of the people in charge and discourage them from focusing on aspects such as sustainability and health. But SF4C is striving to achieve something better by encouraging everyone to make sustainability and health the top priority. In fact, we are certain that there are easy ways of making school food even more sustainable. 

SCHOOLFOOD4CHANGE ENCOURAGES KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER BETWEEN CAFETERIA COOKS

SF4C calls on all school canteen cooks to be agents of change! They are ideally positioned to make sure that change actually comes about. SF4C wants to raise awareness of the importance of the role of school canteen cooks in the school system and to support and strengthen their position in promoting healthy eating. To this end, SF4C creates training materials and recipe suggestions for cooks in schools. This means that pupils will be introduced to a greener menu that contains a wider variety of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes while reducing the amount of processed foods and animal products. The menus are designed to respect cultural and local conditions, using environmentally friendly ingredients with a short supply chain to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent food waste. 

Spreading our message across schools we offer a train-the-trainer programme to learn from each other’s experiences and gain first-hand insights. The training for school cooks and staff will take place both in person and online.  Through dialogue and knowledge transfer as well as a network of international colleagues in other countries, cooks in school kitchens can benefit from greater knowledge and new ideas on which ingredients to use, why and how to use them to ensure healthy, delicious and sustainable meals.      

A SUPPORTIVE FOOD CULTURE ENVIRONMENT AT MUNICIPAL LEVEL  

For society to shift to sustainable and healthy diets, cooks in school kitchens can rely on a large network of experts. They are supported by a network of peers, consisting of urban food professionals and food ambassadors in every city. Together, they will create the conditions needed to make this transition possible.   

All of the materials developed will also be published on the SF4C project website.