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In Germany, the consumer sector "food" is responsible for around 15% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Due to the high demand for food outside the home, changes in this area have the potential to significantly boost climate-efficient nutrition, and this includes changes in school kitchens. Currently, about 264 kg of GHG emissions per year are attributable to the food served to each school child who has school lunch year-round.
Therefore, the project "Climate and Energy Efficient Cooking in Schools" ("Klima- und Energieeffiziente Küche in Schulen” or KEEKS for short) sought to determine the status quo in the kitchens of 22 all-day schools serving a total of 5,000 lunches per day. This was done by taking energy measurements and analyzing the equipment, technology and processes used in the kitchens, and by interviewing kitchen managers using guided interviews. Greenhouse gas emissions arising from menus and kitchen processes were calculated, potential savings were identified, and recommendations for action were developed and tested. The most effective measures - the reduction and substitution of meat and meat products and the establishment of efficient waste management systems - save around 10% of a school kitchen’s greenhouse gas emissions. The recommendations that have been developed can support kitchen staff in designing a climate-friendly, child-friendly, healthy and affordable menu in the school kitchen.
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.
Agriculture is an economic sector with massive impact on biodiversity and agrobiodiversity. Sustainable diets represent a critical policy leverage and a realistic opportunity to reduce the environmental impact of the agro-food sector while improving human health at the same time. Eating out is an increasingly common habit for many consumers and, by offering sustainable dishes, catering companies can play a central role. To do this, they need to understand and correctly assess the sustainability of their food portfolio, but assessment tools are not well established yet. The NAHGAST project, of which this study was part, developed and tested a sustainability assessment tool for catering companies based on concrete targets defined per meal. This study addresses the lack of methods to evaluate the impact of food on biodiversity, with a particular focus on agrobiodiversity. The work illustrates a context-specific application of an enhanced DPSIR model to structure information and select indicators, and proposes a transdisciplinary use of existing metrics. Further research is needed in order to define scientifically sound target values or sustainability ranges for each indicator per meal, in order to calculate them. Strengths and limits of the study are discussed.
Quantitative environmental assessments are crucial in working effectively towards sustainable production and consumption patterns. Over the last decades, life cycle assessments (LCA) have been established as a viable means of measuring the environmental impacts of products along the supply chain. In regard to user and consumption patterns, however, methodological weaknesses have been reported and, several attempts have been made to improve LCA accordingly, for example, by including higher order effects and behavioural science support. In a discussion of such approaches, we show that there has been no explicit attention to the concepts of consumption, often leading to product-centred assessments. We introduce social practice theories in order to make consumption patterns accessible to LCA. Social practices are routinised actions comprising interconnected elements (materials, competences, and meanings), which make them conceivable as one entity (e.g. cooking). Because most social practices include some sort of consumption (materials, energy, air), we were able to develop a framework which links social practices to the life cycle inventory of LCA. The proposed framework provides a new perspective of quantitative environmental assessments by switching the focus from products or users to social practices. Accordingly, we see the opportunity in overcoming the reductionist view that people are just users of products, and instead we see them as practitioners in social practises. This change could enable new methods of interdisciplinary research on consumption, integrating intend-oriented social sciences and impact-oriented assessments. However, the framework requires further revision and, especially, empirical validation.
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.
To contribute to a better understanding of consumer food leftovers and to facilitate their reduction in out-of-home settings, our study analyzes the effects of two common intervention strategies for reducing leftovers in a holistic behavioral model. Based on a quasi-experimental baseline-intervention design, we analyzed how the display of information posters and the reduction of portion sizes take an effect on personal, social and environmental determinants in a structural equation model. Applying data from online surveys and observations among 880 guests (503 baseline, 377 intervention) during two weeks in a university canteen, the suggested model allows to assign effects from the two interventions on plate leftovers to specific changes in behavioral determinants. Portion size reductions for target dishes are found to relate to lower levels of plate waste based on conscious perception, represented in smaller portion size ratings. Effects from seeing information posters are found to base on changed personal attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. However, depending on how an individual reacts to the information (by only making an effort to finish all food or by making an effort and additionally choosing a different dish in the canteen) there are opposite effects on these determinants and consequently also on plate leftovers. Overall, the differentiated results on intervention effects strongly support the benefits of more holistic and in-depth analyses of interventions to reduce plate leftovers and therefore to contribute to more sustainable food consumption in out-of-home settings.
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.
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.