Foodservice – Sustainability

Planet friendly home-grown school feeding: What does it mean? (Africa, 2024 Jul)

Borelli, T., Nekesa, T., Mbelenga, E., Jumbale, M., Morimoto, Y., Bellanca, R., & Jordan, I. (2023). Planet-friendly home-grown school feeding: What does it mean? World Food Programme. https://www.wfp.org/publications/planet-friendly-home-grown-school-feeding-what-does-it-mean

This research seeks to improve the environmental sustainability of school meals in Sub-Saharan Africa by developing a practical tool to guide Planet Friendly procurement practices and HGSF approaches and support the transition to more sustainable food systems.

School meals present a unique opportunity to tackle the various food system challenges, including the depletion and pollution of natural resources, habitat and biodiversity loss, deforestation, ocean acidification, and climate change while delivering multiple social and economic benefits towards sustainable food systems for healthy diets. Despite these advantages, the approach is challenged by the lack of evaluation tools and metrics that can be used to quantify the level of “planet friendliness” in the different regions where the Home Grown School Feeding approach is applied.

Through evaluation of the current school meal supply chain in Sub-Saharan Africa, this study identifies practices in food production, transport, processing, and storage that may influence the impact of school feeding programs on planetary health. The study initially focuses on three main products supplied to schools by the World Food Program (WFP) – maize, beans, and dark green leafy vegetables – and proposes to focus on general agronomic, food processing, and handling practices.

The assessment undertaken has resulted in an evaluation tool for all of WFP’s farmer-directed procurement processes linked to school feeding. The proposed tool, currently in draft form and yet to be tested, provides information about indicators to be included in food procurement policies and processes for the provision of greener school meals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The tool is intended to simplify the evaluation of current procurement processes and guide future decision-making around school procurement to ensure planetary health considerations are widely adopted to bolster systemic resilience. The tool can serve multiple purposes: as a checklist, a scoring template for refining tenders, a monitoring and evaluation tool, or a foundation for co-creating policies for any school feeding program at the school, local, or national level.

Submitted by Christine McCullum-Gomez, PhD, RDN

School Meal Programs Around the World: Results from the 2024 Global Survey of School Meal Programs: Survey Highlights (2024)

The Global Survey of School Meal Programs was launched in 2019 to gather information about school meal programs in every country in a standardized manner, and it has been repeated every 2-3 years. The survey spans a broad set of topics of relevance to school meals, bringing them together under one umbrella to spotlight their linkages. The 2024 Global Survey of School Meal Programs received a response from 142 country governments, which represents 73% of the 194 countries that were invited to participate in the survey.

School meal programs have the potential to play an important role in food systems transformation. This follows from the aggregate scale of these programs, which reach at least 408.2 million children worldwide and are found in at least 148 countries. It also follows from the programs’ multisectoral nature, with relevance for social protection, education, health and nutrition, agricultural and economic growth, and environmental sustainability. School meal programs touch on each of the key goals of food systems transformation.

Environment and Climate

Sustainability is increasingly prioritized in school meal programs, with countries implementing a variety of initiatives to both limit their environmental vulnerability and reduce their environmental impact. The Global Survey of School Meal Programs captured various indicators of environmental sustainability in school meal programs.

A large majority (81%) of school meal programs took some steps to limit food waste. This was generally more common in lower-income settings, where food tends to be less plentiful.
A majority (67%) of school meal programs also took some steps to limit package waste. Most commonly, these included the re-use of bags/containers (followed by 57% of programs that took some step to limit package waste) and the recycling of packaging materials.
Approximately 58% of school meal programs relied on wood stoves or charcoal stoves for food preparation, and among these, 78.5% took some steps to reduce the use of firewood/charcoal as fuel. Toward this end, the most common step taken was the use of fuel efficient (energy efficient) stoves.
As part of the food system, school meal programs are both affected by, and a driver of, climate change. Nevertheless, just 38% of programs targeted foods that were considered to be “climate friendly”.
On the other hand, a large majority (79%) of programs took some steps to reduce the distance traveled by food from the site of production to consumption (i.e., the food miles/kilometers). Across regions, this emphasis on local procurement was most common in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 89% of programs aimed to reduce the distance traveled by food.

Greener Allied Health Professional Hub: Food & Nutrition (NHS, UK)

The UK National Health Service (NHS) has the third largest clinical workforce in the NHS. Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) play an important role in Delivering a Net Zero NHS, which is the overarching framework.

The “Greener Allied Health Professional (AHP) Hub” aims to provide:

Information on the importance of environmental sustainability for both population health and the health of the environment to provide clear actionable steps which AHPs can take to improve their own environmental sustainability.
Examples of the ways in which AHPs are already doing things which improve environmental sustainability to include ‘what good looks like’ for individual AHPs and their teams as well as wider examples demonstrating how AHPs can lead this work in their organisations.
Suggestions of how AHPs can contribute in relation to environmentally sustainable practice, digital, food and diet, use of equipment and public health and prevention.

Food & Nutrition is one of the focus areas for the Greener AHP Hub. As a food and nutrition professional, this NHS resource outlines key areas where you can make a difference in reducing the carbon footprint of healthcare food systems. It highlights your role in reducing food waste through optimizing mealtime support, promoting best practices, and utilizing technology for ordering and monitoring.

By advocating for healthy, low-carbon diets and minimizing packaging waste, you can address the broader impacts of food systems. This resource will help you implement strategies such as conducting waste audits, supporting patients in adopting better eating habits, and promoting the importance of nutrition and hydration among food service staff. Ultimately, this page equips you to link food, health, and climate change initiatives within the NHS, driving sustainable practices and better patient outcomes.

An example is the “Sustainability in Healthcare: Mildmay’s Low-Carbon Menu Transforms Patient Care“. Mildmay Hospital’s dietetics and catering teams, in collaboration with the NHS and dietetics students, developed a low-carbon menu tailored to vulnerable patients using recipes from the NHS England recipe bank. After iterative development and feedback, the winter menu achieved an 18% carbon footprint reduction and minimized food waste to 10% of portions served, while patient input led to further improvements like diverse recipes and a weekly cooked breakfast option for summer.

Upcycled Food Association (UFA)(Website)

Upcycled Food Association (UFA) is a nonprofit trade association focused on reducing food waste by growing the upcycled food economy. The mission of the UFA is to champion upcycling as one of the most critical solutions to mitigate the climate crisis and advocate for the best interests of the upcycled food industry.

They envision a global food system where all food is elevated to its highest and best use. UFA is leveraging market forces to prevent food waste by coordinating hundreds of companies around the world and empowering millions of consumers to prevent climate change with the products they buy.

UFA has four main objectives:
1 Attracting more support for the upcycled industry
2 Connecting the upcycled business network
3 Improving the upcycled supply chain
4 Increasing consumer demand for upcycled products

UFA has 3 impact areas:

Research Fellowships – Upcycled Food Foundation research fellowships are dedicated to supporting evidence-based industry progress and educating consumers about the environmental and social benefits of upcycled foods.

Policy & Advocacy – We work to elevate and amplify the upcycled food industry by urging policymakers to support progressive policy and programs. Learn about our policy priorities, where we are advocating, and how we mobilize and represent UFA members.

Food Waste Funder Circle – Helping to fund the fight against food waste, the Food Waste Funder Circle is a network designed for private, public, and philanthropic funders interested in using their capital to solve food waste challenges.

School Meals Coalition. (2021 website)

The School Meals Coalition is a prominent and innovative vehicle for multilateral action and addresses multiple Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) outcomes. The School Meals Coalition is a government-led and partner-supported effort that aims at ensuring that by 2030 every child worldwide can receive a healthy meal in school. Led by Brazil, Finland, and France, the Coalition was one of the most impactful and successful initiatives coming out of the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021.

The Coalition is an example of a new generation of multilateralism; It’s about governments and partners agreeing to join forces and work together to improve the quality, sustainability, and scale of national school meals programmes and complementary interventions. It is about breaking silos and pooling resources – best practices, experience, information, and technical support. Through its multisectoral and holistic approach, the Coalition addresses implementation bottlenecks, strengthens evidence for decision-making, provides opportunities for improved coordination and generates the political will and buy-in needed for change through advocacy.

Besides food provision (SDG 2), school meal programs boost agriculture, create jobs, increase school attendance and learning, and enhance health. They function as in-kind cash transfers, promoting social stability, gender equity, and comprehensive social protection efforts. Additionally, school meals programmes can integrate complementary interventions, including WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene), nutrition education, and other routine school health and nutrition services.

School meals represent a powerful, multisectoral tool, which can contribute to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals, including poverty (SDG1), hunger (SDG2), health (SDG3), education (SDG4), gender equality (SDG5), economic growth (SDG8), reduced inequalities (SDG10), Responsible consumption and production (SDG12), climate action (SDG13) and strengthened partnerships (SDG17).

To achieve this member states have set three objectives:

Restore all national school meal programmes lost to the pandemic by 2023
Reach the 73 million most vulnerable children who were not reached even prior to the pandemic by 2030
Improve the quality and efficiency of school health and nutrition programmes globally by 2030

2025 January

Planet-friendly school meals: opportunities to improve children’s health and leverage change in food systems (2024)

Pastorino, S., et al. (2024, November 18). Planet-friendly school meals: Opportunities to improve children’s health and leverage change in food systems. The Lancet Planetary Health. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(24)00302-4

Planet-friendly school meals, defined as programmes delivering equitable and healthy foods for children, produced in ways that do not pollute or overexploit natural resources and protect biodiversity, are a platform to tackle many food system challenges.

Multiple stakeholder collaborations are required to move towards planet-friendly school meals. This entails changes directed at two sets of policies as outlined in the Planet-friendly school meals conceptual framework (figure): those making immediate changes to school meal programmes; and those developing demand-driven planet-friendly procurement policies that promote ecological farming and develop sustainable regional food systems.

School meals, mostly state-funded, reach 418 million children every day worldwide offering an opportunity to improve diet quality, and ultimately nutrition and health, and act as a catalyst for food systems transformation contributing to meeting global climate, food, and biodiversity goals.

2025 January

Good Practices in School Gardens and School Meals: Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean (2024)

As part of food and nutrition education actions and a component of Sustainable Schools, the Programme encourages school garden initiatives, considering their potential to transform food habits of current and future generations, training students to be aware of the impacts of food production on the environment and on agri-food systems. In addition, with the greater impact of climate change, this educational tool becomes even more relevant as it can offer concrete contributions to the mitigation of climate effects.

Since 2009, the Brazil-FAO International Cooperation Programme for School Meals, an alliance between the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE), the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has been developing activities to strengthen and institutionalise school meal programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

About 2 billion people in the world are overweight or obese due to a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. Around 133.4 million Latin Americans and Caribbeans do not have access to a healthy diet. In addition, this region has the highest healthy food costs (LAC Food and Nutrition Security Overview, 2023).

Given this scenario, the cooperation has promoted actions aimed at offering healthy and adequate menus, public procurement from smallholder farming, improvement of school infrastructure and food and nutrition education actions such as school gardens, exchanges of experiences, training and technical visits between 26 LAC countries, within the framework of the Sustainable School Feeding Network (RAES).

2025 January

Serving hope: rethinking school meal programs in Latin America (2024)

López, D. S., Gamba, M., & Uriza-Pinzón, J. (2024). Serving hope: Rethinking school meal programs in Latin America. The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, 36, Article 100818. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2024.100818

Fig. 1 School meal programs in Latin America.

This article is a commentary providing a good overview and links to improving school meals programs, including issues to foster and educate on Sustainable Food Systems.

Snippets from the Article: “To bolster the effectiveness of school food programs in LAC it’s imperative to adopt innovative strategies. The above involves integrating nutritional education into the school curriculum, establishing sustainable school farms with local products, and incorporating gastronomy into SMP to enhance menu acceptance and reduce food waste. Community involvement ensures cultural relevance and supports local farmers, while technological solutions aid in addressing socioeconomic disparities, infrastructure, and logistics, facilitating better monitoring and data-driven decision-making. Moreover, long-term initiatives for enhancing school food programs should focus on aligning policies, raising awareness, capacity building, and conducting research and evaluation.”

“Fulfilling Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targeting hunger mitigation and universal food access within the framework of SMPs is crucial for global well-being. Enhancing quality and coverage in SMP across LAC is essential, requiring concerted efforts to improve nutrition, promote sustainable development, and advance global health.”

2025 January

Center for Ecoliteracy

The Center for Ecoliteracy in California, USA, advances the teaching and modeling of sustainable practices in K–12 schools. We build partnerships and the capacity of K–12 schools to support healthy, sustainable school communities and food systems change in schools. The Center for Ecoliteracy leads systems change initiatives, publishes original books and resources, facilitates conferences and professional development, and provides strategic consulting. We work at multiple levels of scale, with local, regional, state, and national programs.

Our California Food for California Kids® initiative builds the capacity of public school districts to provide students with fresh, locally-grown food and reinforce connections between the classroom, cafeteria, and garden. With a network of over 100 public school districts across the state, California Food for California Kids advances practical solutions that transform school food systems and how students learn about the food they eat.

In 2021, the Center for Ecoliteracy successfully advocated for California to become the first state to adopt universal school meals as a co-sponsor of the Free School Meals for All Act and a core member of the School Meals for All coalition. We are proud to be part of California’s leadership in transforming school food and recognizing the important role of school nutrition professionals.

AUDA NEPAD Guidelines for the Design and Implementation of Home-Grown School Feeding Programmes in Africa (2022)

The Guidelines for the Design and Implementation of African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) Home Grown School Feeding Programmes in Africa is the result of a collaborative effort supported by the African Union Commission for Education, Science, Technology and Innovations (AUC-ESTI) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

Home Grown School Feeding has been recognized by African leaders for its contribution to human resources and capital development in the continent and for having an important role in inclusive development, health, rural development, gender equality and inclusive education, particularly for the poor and socially marginalised communities.

These HGSF guidelines are meant to provide general direction or guidance to African Union Member States who wish to establish HGSF programmes or review existing school feeding programmes to link them more directly with smallholder farmers and other role players in the school food value chain, while addressing the nutrition component more adequately.

The five school feeding quality standards form the organizational structure of these guidelines, namely,
i) policy and legal framework,
ii) financial capacity and stable funding,
iii) institutional capacity for implementation and coordination,
iv) design and implementation,
v) and community participation.

The mandate of AUDA-NEPAD is to:
a) Coordinate and Execute priority regional and continental projects to promote regional integration towards the accelerated realisation of Agenda 2063; and
b) Strengthen capacity of African Union Member States and regional bodies, advance knowledge-based advisory support, undertake the full range of resource mobilisation and serve as the continent’s technical interface with all Africa’s development stakeholders and development partners.