Organic school meal systems – towards a more sustainable nutrition

Nutritional and health problems related to life style alarm European governments. The interest in school meals as a lever for change is increasing because young people reside longer in public institutions and their often unsatisfactory eating patterns might be counterbalanced by healthy school food. Organic food contributes to sustainable nutrition, and hence is an interesting starting point for healthier menus and food education. The research project ‘innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth’ (iPOPY) studies efficient ways to implement organic food in public serving outlets for young people. The project has four explorative work packages studying policies, supply chains and certification, the young consumers’ perception and learning about sustainability and organic food, and health effects of organic menus in Denmark, Finland, Italy, and Norway. Finland and Italy serve a warm school meal daily for all pupils, whereas Denmark and Norway rely on packed lunch from home. Italy and Denmark have ambitious goals for organic food in schools, whereas Finland and Norway have not (yet). Political decisions are required, but not enough, to ensure well functioning organic school meal systems

Das regionale Standbein stärken – Ergebnisse einer Institutionenanalyse der Bio-Branche in Ostdeutschland

The organic sector in East Germany is a latecomer. An institutional analysis shows specific pathways and restrictions for its further development: The East German or-ganic sector is integrated in national and international markets but it is linked only weakly with the regional context. Consequently, regional networks are a chance to develop the regional market and broaden its social basis as well

Increasing organic consumption by school meals – lessons learned in the iPOPY project

Increasingly, food consumption occurs in out-of-home contexts, where organic food can also have a role to play. Public food services may be utilised to increase the sustainability of providing nutrition. Although school meals may be well suited to integrating organic food and sustainable nutrition concepts, school food provision systems are very different across Europe. This paper compares school food provision systems and their utilisation of organic food in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy and Norway, discussing how various strategies and instruments used for organic food procurement in school meals may increase organic food consumption. Using five analytical categories—(a) type of school food service, (b) degree of public financing, (c) degree of political and administrative involvement in school food procurement in general, (d) degree of specific support for organic school food, and (e) availability of organic food supply adapted to school food service— values have been assessed for each country in order to summarise and visually display their differences. Especially, the degree of specific support for organic school food shows a significant relation to the actual use of organic food in school meals. To maximise the share of organic food in school meals, instruments should be adapted to the actual points of departure in each case. It is argued that strategies and instruments designed to promote public procurement of organic food increase the consumption of organic food in schools and that such policies will have the greatest impact when they are linked up with broader concepts such as a whole-school approach and sustainable nutrition

Bio-Schulverpflegung: Berlin und Italien sind Spitzenreiter

This web-news describe a report about school meals in Germany (see Orgprints 16669). Die Schulverpflegung in Deutschland befindet sich im Wandel vom Pausenbrot hin zu einer Vollverpflegung mit einem warmen Mittagessen. Mehr Schulstunden pro Tag aufgrund der Verkürzung des Abiturs, die Ausweitung der Ganztagsschule und das Interesse an gesunder Ernährung für Kinder und Jugendliche treiben diese Entwicklung an und zeigen Chancen für eine Bio-Ernährung auf. Allerdings ist die Schulverpflegung aufgrund der zersplitterten Zuständigkeiten in Deutschland sehr unübersichtlich und es gibt eine Vielfalt an Angeboten in unterschiedlicher Qualität. Berlin ist in Deutschland ein Spitzenreiter in puncto verbindliche Qualitätsstandards beim Schulessen. Im europäischen Vergleich hat Italien die Nase vorn. Das sind zwei Ergebnisse des kürzlich erschienenen Berichtes aus dem internationalen Forschungsprojekt „Innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth“ (iPOPY). Beteiligt ist auch Dr. Benjamin Nölting vom Zentrum Technik Gesellschaft der Technischen Universität Berlin. Die Forscher analysierten die öffentliche Bio-Verpflegung von Kindern und Jugendlichen in Italien, Finnland, Dänemark, Norwegen und fallweise in Deutschland und untersuchten, wie der Konsum von Bio-Lebensmitteln in der öffentlichen Verpflegung gesteigert werden kann

School food provision in Germany. A first analysis of the role of organic produce

School meal provision in Germany is changing from a type of supplementary food provision towards full warm school meals. Reasons for this transition are longer school days, the expansion of the all-day school model, and an increasing interest in a healthy nutrition for children and young people. However, the organisation of school meal systems is patchy and confusing; there is an enormous range of services in various qualities. This paper describes the current situation and explores chances for sustainable school meal systems emerging out of this change. The focus is on the use of organic food in school meals

Der Blick der sozial-ökologischen Agrar- und Ernährungsforschung auf den Bio-Bereich

Social-ecological research analyses agriculture and nutrition in the perspective of sustainable development. This interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach em-beds the organic sector in a broad societal and ecological context and integrates nor-mative aspects. Some new insights from German research projects are presented

Providing organic food for millions of Italian pupils. How do we make it?

Italy has successfully improved the quality of school meals over the last decade. Actors from policy and public administration put emphasis especially on the quality of the used products; they should whenever possible come from controlled and certified production. In this paper the focus is on organic products. This paper analyses three crucial aspects of the procurement of high quality school food: a) strengths and weaknesses of organic supply chains in the perspective of producers and caterers; b) call for tenders being used as a key instrument by municipalities, being in charge of school food procurement, in order to influence the quality of school food; and c) best practice cases of municipal school food systems which combine supply chains on the one hand and municipalities and their activities on the other hand. The preliminary results suggest that an integrated approach is needed for high quality school meals. Various stakeholders should be brought together, to discuss their demands and increase the understandin

Constellations of public organic food procurement for youth. An interdisciplinary analytical tool

The research project “innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth” (iPOPY) combines a multitude of national and disciplinary perspectives: a necessary condition for a holistic understanding of public organic food procurement for youth (POPY). One challenge of such a research agenda lies in the integration of diverse results. This calls for an interdisciplinary research approach that facilitates discussion about results generated in different work packages (WP). This report sketches the methodological tool constellation analysis, one of the basic assumptions of which is that technical, natural and social elements and developments are closely intertwined and can only be analysed by taking into account their heterogeneity. Constellation analysis may serve as a bridging concept for the integration and synthesis of project results, which is a task of WP 1. This report presents preliminary results from an explorative constellation analysis of (organic) school meals. In the appendix, a list of definitions with regard to POPY is provided – the iPOPY glossary, which may later be further developed and published separately

Stand und Rahmenbedingungen einer ostdeutschen Energiewende : Ein Überblick

Zuerst erschienen im Lang-Verlag: Keppler, Dorothee; Nölting, Benjamin: Stand und Rahmenbedingungen einer ostdeutschen Energiewende : Ein Überblick. - In: Keppler, Dorothee; Nölting, Benjamin; Schröder, Carolin (Hg.): Neue Energie im Osten - Gestaltung des Umbruchs : Perspektiven für eine zukunftsfähige sozial-ökologische Energiewende. - Frankfurt am Main [u.a.] : Lang, 2011. - ISBN: 978-3-631-61009-1. - S. 99–120

Increasing organic food consumption through public procurement Findings and recommendations - With a special focus on school meals

This product is a leaflet (available in English and Italian)summarizing recommendations from the iPOPY research project. The project studied how increased consumption of organic food may be achieved by strategies and instruments linked to public food-serving outlets for young people. iPOPY analysed the following key aspects of public organic food procurement (POP) for youth in Italy, Denmark, Finland, Norway and to some extent in Germany: Policy issues, supply chain organization and the role of certification, users’ perceptions and participation in the food system, and the health impacts of organic food implementation. The interdisciplinary research focussed on organic school meals as the most important channel of public food provision for youth. This leaflet, addressing actors at the interface between science and practice, presents the main findings of the project and provides recommendations to specific actors, such as policy makers as well as practitioners and stake holders from the catering sector, administrations and schools or other food serving arenas