planetary health diets & cooking – better school meals

STARTER

Describing the approach

SF4C has been striving to achieve better school lunches by encouraging everyone to make sustainability and health the top priority. We are certain that there are easy ways of making school food even more sustainable and healthy. School cooks are ideally positioned to make sure that change comes about. To this end, SF4C created training materials and recipe suggestions for cooks in schools. School children have been 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.  

APPETIZER

Fact Sheets 

Get a quick overview of the most important SF4C tools:   

Factsheet: School menu design handbook
Get an overview of how the School menu design handbook supports cooks, educators, food service professionals and even families in designing, preparing, and promoting school meals that are healthy, sustainable, and enjoyable for children. 

Factsheet: Recipe handbook
Recipes developed by SF4C chefs designed to support nutritious, planetary-friendly eating, complement the School Menu Design Handbook. 

Factsheet: Canteen Days
By organizing a Canteen Day, you can engage the entire school community and celebrate good food practices. These events can inspire lasting positive change. 

Factsheet: Green Spoon
Green Spoon is an easy-to-use online tool, developed within SF4C, that helps schools and municipalities understand how their food choices affect both the environment and children’s health. It also provides data for Social Return on Investment (SROI) analyses. Link directly to the tool: Green Spoon

Factsheet: Sensory Testing
Want to improve acceptance of new dishes? In SF4C, a simple method for sensory testing has been used to understand how pupils experience a school meal. it has helped schools and municipalities assess children’s acceptance of healthier and more sustainable dishes. 

MAIN COURSES

Approach Tools & Content

These detailed and content-rich guides support the development of healthy, tasty and sustainable school meals and describe how the whole school society can be engaged. 

The school menu design handbook
This handbook can be used as a reference text in the training of cooks. The manual provides a systemic tool for the design, preparation and acceptance of healthier and sustainable school meals. 

The recipe handbook
This recipe handbook is the result of a collective effort involving chefs, nutritionists, educators, public administrators, and researchers from 12 European countries. The result: 42 recipes that do not only meet nutritional and environmental standards but also serve as tools for communication, education, and inclusion. 

Canteen day guide
This guide helps you organize a Canteen Day Party at your school or in the city, including tips and tricks on activities and what is important in planning and implementation. 

SIDE DISHES

Stories & Scientific insights

The side dishes give you more concrete examples from the work done in cities. Here you can also find scientific articles produced within the project. 

Scientific Insight
A large-scale European study on the role of sensory liking, emotional responses, and food neophobia in driving the acceptance of sustainable meals served in school canteens
This study evaluated whether SF4C recipes could achieve sensory acceptance, elicit positive emotional responses among children, and consequently reduce food waste in school canteens. Overall, the results of this study underscore the importance of culturally tailored strategies to improve the sensory liking and positive emotions towards sustainable school meals, promoting healthier dietary patterns while contributing to environmental sustainability by reducing food waste. 

Story from Germany
News from Germany: Cooking Workshops Inspire Healthier School Catering
The German partner Speiseräume designs sustainable food systems for companies, municipalities and states. They have worked together with Essen and Nuremberg school kitchen staff to explore what sustainable, healthy and tasty school meals can look like. Here you can read about some of their achievements. 

DESSERTS

Impactful good practices