Every diet has an impact on an individual’s health status, the environment, as well as on social concerns. A growing number of meals are consumed in the out-of-home catering sector, in which a systematic sustainability assessment is not part of common practice. In order to close this gap, an instrument was developed as part of the NAHGAST project. After more than one year of using the NAHGAST online tool, it needs to be assessed what positive environmental influences can be realized by using the tool. For this reason, this article deals with the question of whether an online tool can enable stakeholders from the out-of-home consumption sector to revise their meals with regard to aspects of a sustainable diet. In addition, it will be answered how precise recipe revisions of the most popular lunchtime meals influence the material footprint as well as the carbon footprint. In conclusion, an online tool can illustrate individual sustainability paths for stakeholders in the out-of-home consumption sector and enables an independent recipe revision for already existing meals. The results show that even slight changes in recipes could lead to savings of up to a third in carbon footprint as well as in material footprint. In relation to the out-of-home consumption sector, this results in the potential for substantial multiplication effects that will pave the way for the dissemination of sustainable nutrition.
Aufgrund seiner starken Umweltauswirkungen gilt der Lebensmittelsektor durch Effekte in Produktion, Verarbeitung, Konsum und Entsorgung gemeinhin als ein wichtiges Handlungsfeld, soll eine gesellschaftliche Transformation in Richtung Nachhaltigkeit weiter vorangetrieben werden. Da Ernährungsgewohnheiten sowohl ökologische Auswirkungen induzieren als auch gesundheitliche Folgen für die Verbraucher haben, sind Konzepte gefragt, die ökologische mit gesundheitlichen Indikatoren kombinieren; diese sind jedoch bislang rar. Das vorgestellte Instrument des Nutritional Footprint greift diese Problemstellung auf und verbindet in einem innovativen Konzept jeweils vier Kernindikatoren beider Dimensionen. Mithilfe des Konzepts erhalten Verbraucher einen Überblick zu Umwelt- und Gesundheitswirkungen ihrer Ernährung. Unternehmen können wiederum interne Datensätze verwalten, Benchmarking betreiben und ihre externe Kommunikationsleistung erweitern.
Food labels are able to support consumers in making more sustainable food choices in out-of-home consumption situations. Thereby, the effect of changing consumption behaviour depends on the format of food labels and on the information it provides. In order to assess the importance of the amount of information as well as the design of food labels displaying sustainability aspects, we test different formats of food labels using a best-worst choice design. So far, no research tested a variation of information depth while keeping label designs fixed. We find clear preferences across both dimensions. Results indicate that consumers regard labels with a higher information depth as more helpful in order to choose a sustainable meal. For the label design it became obvious that the slider-design is preferred over footprints and traffic light label design.
Gesund, umweltfreundlich und sozialverträglich : wie ein Onlinetool hilft, nachhaltiger zu kochen
(2020)
Jede Kostform hat Auswirkungen auf den individuellen Gesundheitsstatus, die Umwelt und soziale Aspekte. Insbesondere ökologische und soziale Belange werden im Alltag der Außer-Haus-Verpflegung in der Regel nur vage abgeschätzt, eine systematische Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung von Speisen findet zumeist nicht statt. Seit Mai 2018 unterstützt der hier vorgestellte Menü-Rechner Akteure in unterschiedlichen Verpflegungseinrichtungen bei der Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung. Das Instrument wurde im Rahmen des NAHGAST-Projektes (www.nahgast.de) in Kooperation mit fünf Praxispartnern entwickelt und durch insgesamt 120 Rezepturen getestet und validiert. Der vorliegende Artikel gibt einen Überblick über Nachhaltigkeitsbewertungen ausgewählter Rezepturen (Gerichte mit Fisch und Fleisch, sowie vegetarische und vegane Gerichte) und stellt heraus, welche Effekte sich für die ökologische, gesundheitliche und soziale Dimension zeigen.
Every diet has an impact on an individual's health status, the environment as well as on social aspects. In particular, ecological and social concerns are usually only vaguely assessed in the daily routines of out-of-home catering and a systematic sustainability assessment of meals is usually not carried out. Since May 2018, the menu calculator presented in this paper has been supporting stakeholders in various catering establishments with their sustainability assessment. The tool was developed within the NAHGAST project (www.nahgast.de) in cooperation with five practice partners and tested and validated by a total of 120 recipes. This article provides an overview of selected recipes' sustainability assessments (meals with fish and meat as well as vegetarian and vegan meals) and highlights the effects on the ecological, health and social dimensions.
The article gives insights into the implementation process of sustainable management strategies in the food service sector. Furthermore, the normative requirements for sustainability in form of a mission statement, called "sustainable food services" are presented. The authors perceive this mission statement as a means to transfer current political demands (as in the SDG of the UN) into the sector. It could serve as a model for the entire food service sector to support and facilitate implementing aspects of sustainability into business practices with the help of sustainable management tools.
Sustainable out-of-home nutrition can help achieve overarching sustainability goals through a transformation in demands of consumers in this growing market. Studies indicate that individual food choice behaviours in out-of-home settings relate to a wide set of personal, social and situational factors. These factors can be influenced by various intervention strategies. In an expert meeting and a focus group we invited caterers and consumers to generate, discuss and evaluate various practical intervention ideas. Both parties largely perceive the explored ideas as useful and agree on key intervention ideas. Overall caterers and consumers state to prefer nudging strategies over information and participation interventions.
Since human nutrition is responsible for about 30 % of the global natural resource use and in order to decrease resource use to a level in line with planetary boundaries, Lukas et al. (2016) proposed a re-source use reduction in the nutrition sector by a factor 2 (Material Footprint).
The catering sector needs clearly defined indicators to assess their business activities' impact on ecology, social aspects, economic value, and health status. Within the project NAHGAST two sets of indicators, called NAHGAST Meal-Basis and NAHGAST Meal-Pro were developed. The indicator sets are proposed to measure several, with sustainability-associated challenges, such as such as the ecological, social and economical effects, which may come along with the production and the consumption of a meal. Basically, the NAHGAST Meal-Basis deals with qualitative indicators, such as the amount of organic food per serving or the percentage of food wasted. This set is supposed to enable leaders to assess the sustainability of their meals and to visualize future improvements on a simplistic level. The NAHGAST Meal-Pro deals with a more sophisticated set of indicators, such as the carbon and material footprint or the cost recovery per meal. Both sets are underpinned with sus-tainable targets and elaborated as an Excel-based assessment tool, which is tested within a one-year case study. The usefulness and the limits of the tool, as well as current results of the implementation including pro-posed challenges, are discussed.
Nutrition is responsible for about 30% of global natural resource use. In order to limit the negative impact the nutritional sector has on the environment and on society, the consumption and processing of foodstuffs with assumed low negative impact is an important topic in the effort of sustainable development. In professional kitchens, clearly defined indicators assessing the impact of business activities are needed in this effort. The research and development in the NAHGAST project provides groundwork that could be of important assistance in this effort. Two versions of an assessment tool, with indicators of different complexity (NAHGAST Meal-Basic and NAHGAST Meal-Pro), were developed that can be used by kitchen professionals to determine the sustainability performance of their products - the offered meal. An informed selection of indicators, and a discussion of what processes and impacts this indicator relates to in the wider context, are essential and are discussed in this paper. Furthermore, in the selection of indicators for the purpose of our research certain criteria were considered simultaneously: (1) Communicability - What information an indicator can communicate and how comprehensible this information is for different actors; (2) Feasibility and data availability - Whether there is sufficient data for an indicator to be included and whether it is realistic for companies to integrate this indicator in their daily work practice; and (3) Scientific relevance - Whether the indicator is relevant for sustainability efforts on a larger scale and for related discussions in the scientific community. Insights related to these considerations are valuable for future developments in sustainability assessment in out-of-home gastronomy. The tool has been used to evaluate a number of dishes and results are deemed meaningful. However, assessments must not be understood as an accurate measurement but as an approximation of the sustainability of meals. At the level of individual indicators, they allow a detailed analysis and targeted optimization of recipes, while the aggregated results in the form of labels can be communicated well to customers. However, deficiencies and challenges, as discovered in the application phase of the project, demonstrate research gaps in the wider context. Finally, further steps for an integration of the tool in company processes and remaining options for companies to adjust the tool are discussed.