The ICDA SFS Toolkit awarded a total of 12 Nutrition/Dietetic Associations (NDAs) grants from 2022-24. For more information about the grants see: NDA Sustainability Grants. These are the first set of grants that were awarded in 2022 and finalized in 2023.
🇦🇺 Dietitians Australia (DA)
DA created PlanEATary Quest to promote planetary health, one bite at a time. The PlanEATary Quest encourages dietitians to choose their own adventure to modify your own diet-related practices in line with current evidence regarding planetary health outcomes.
Visit the PlanEATary Quest Google site to take your own quest in 4 easy steps:
👣 Step 1: Complete the quiz – Complete a 12-question PlanEATary Quiz to see where you’re kicking goals, and where you can improve.
🐾 Step 2: Design your Challenge – Select from over 100 tasks to design a challenge that will help you improve your score. We suggest choosing 3 – 10 tasks, focusing on the questions where you scored the lowest on the Quiz.
👣 Step 3: Complete your Challenge – Time to get your hands dirty! Spend 2-3 weeks completing your chosen tasks. As you go, you may like to reflect on what helps or hinders your quest for planetary health.
🐾 Step 4: Repeat the Quiz – Repeat the PlanEATary Quiz to see whether you’ve improved your score and are interacting with our food system more sustainably.
This grant was managed by Dr Liza Barbour and Sandy Murray, both active members of Dietitians Australia’s Food and Environment Interest Group. They established a working group of 7 members and met monthly for the first 8 months of this project, during which time we reviewed the existing materials (the ‘Eco-Friendly Food Challenge) and, based on our expertise in the field, developed an updated, evidence-based version.
The PlanEATary Quest was piloted with a group of practising dietitians and health promotion practitioners (n = 47) from Sep–Nov with a group of 5 Master’s of Dietetics during their 8-week public health placement. They recruited PlanEATary Quest participants, monitored their level of engagement throughout the intervention, and followed up with a series of interviews and focus groups (n = 14). See the infographic of key findings from this pilot.
While their placement focused on more ‘process evaluation’, they will also be analysing and writing up further results for publication in 2024. A pilot with nutrition and dietetic students is planned for February – June 2024.
🇩🇪 German Association of Dietitians (VDD)
Germany increased awareness for German-speaking dietitians in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland towards sustainable achievements in the field of nutrition and dietetics and how to present these within the ICDA SFS-Toolkit. (2022 Sept – 2023 Aug)
Manuela Thul led the project and produced several products in a participatory manner, and spread them via the toolkit and local structures such as Webinars, Social media, NDA congress, and reaching out to schools and universities.
Manuela promoted the grant and the #ICDAsfsToolkit on the Junior_Dietitian Instagram, on the digital chat at the 64th NDA congress 13-14 May 2022, and in an article in the NDA Newsletter and the Annual Business Report 2022 of the German Association of Dietitians. These are great ways to help your NDA know the #ICDAsfsToolkit and the resources it contains.
Another result of this promotion is the #ICDAsfsToolkit Advisor for Germany, Elina Zwickert, who was also highlighted in the March issue of GROW — we hope you are subscribed!
🇬🇷 Greece: Hellenic Association of Dietitians and Nutritionists
Greece improved and spread the “Straight from Nature” YouTube Channel, which teaches about foods as they come from nature, aiming to support food sustainability.
Despina Varaklas created a YouTube channel by the name of Straight from Nature. The purpose of the channel is to create videos that talk about food products. Every video talks about a different product, e.g., olive oil, garlic, onions, cinnamon, etc. As dietitians, we learn about foods, nutritional values, etc, but often we don’t know enough details about each one, keeping our clients and patients short of valuable knowledge that can make for the benefit to their health. Using this channel, dietitians can learn about each product of nature, where it comes from, its health benefits, and how it can be easily incorporated into the diet.
The grant helped promote the channel through Social media, the dietetic association, webinars, interviews, workshops, and conferences, and was able to assist in the tools needed to make the videos a reality. The subscribers and watch hours of the channel have increased, but mainly the feedback is joyfully positive.
Dietitians and other health professionals are advised to listen to these videos and make use of the content. Sharing the videos is a way of you contributing to the project as well.
You can also subscribe to a private Facebook group, “Living Healthy: Learning how to balance Food, Thoughts, and Emotions”, where safe conversations can take place with discussions and comments.
🇪🇸 Spain: Consejo General de Colegios Oficiales de Dietistas-Nutricionistas (El CGCODN)
Spain worked on a project titled “Transitioning to sustainable diets: a tool to identify people’s barriers and motivators for following a sustainable diet”.
Júlia Muñoz-Martínez led the development and validation of a questionnaire to identify the motivators and barriers to following a sustainable diet among Spanish citizens sensitive to socioeconomic differences.
The tool is called the SALSA questionnaire (Sustainability and Healthy Diets, as its acronym in Spanish) and intends to provide the means for dietitians and other stakeholders involved in public health, for the development interventions aiming to equitably promote healthy and sustainable diets.
The process was to identify all the barriers and facilitators for following a sustainable diet among different socioeconomic groups in Barcelona to develop a first draft of SALSA. This was administered to 9 Spanish experts in the fields of sustainability, nutrition (including a member from the Spanish NDA), psychology, and sociology to validate the content. By March 2023, the survey pre-test was done with citizens from the city of Barcelona and its urban surroundings through 3 focus group discussions and 5 individual interviews.
- In February 2025, an open-access article was published: The SALSA Questionnaire: creation and validation of a tool to assess people’s self-perceived barriers and facilitators to follow a sustainable and healthy diet (2025 Feb)
Questions? Ideas? Feedback? Contact: ICDAsfs.coordinator@acadiau.ca
The ICDA SFS Toolkit is made to be used & shared freely.
Please cite the authors of the resources you use, and the ICDA SFS Toolkit if you are able:
InternationalDietetics.org/Sustainability
