Föreläsningar och seminarier KI Lifestyle4Health network seminar #9: Sustainable dietary habits through optimised school meals

Presentation summary

The food we eat is one of the major contributors to climate change and ill-health globally. Now the question is, how can we achieve dietary shifts in order to halt these effects? School meals can reach children of every socioeconomic background and hold a near-unique potential to foster sustainable dietary habits in the younger generation, which can persist into adulthood.

The OPTIMAT-project was established at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm to explore a pathway to designing and introducing children to climate friendly, nutritious, affordable and culturally appropriate -i.e., sustainable - school lunches. The project has resulted in several research outputs, including two intervention studies where climate friendly and nutritious school lunches were introduced in Swedish primary schools with no undesirable effects on food waste, pupils’ consumption of, or satisfaction with, school lunches.

This approach could serve as a role model for public sector meals in Sweden or in other countries as well as contribute to pushing research and policy in the direction needed to safeguard both human and planetary health.