How a Transformation towards Sustainable Community Catering Can Succeed (original) (raw)
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Endorsing Sustainable Food Consumption: Prospects from Public Catering
Journal of Consumer Policy, 2012
The aim of this article was to analyse an attempt to promote sustainable consumption by shaping the conditions for consumption. In particular, the focus lies on sustainable public catering as an approach to shaping both the supply of and demand for sustainable meals. In order to capture the processes of governing consumption, the way is traced in which rationalities (ways of thinking and calculating), technologies (means and instruments), visibilities (concrete manifestations), and identities (types of agents assumed) related to a policy intervention for sustainable public catering are interpreted and recreated by three main groups of actors involved: policy makers, catering professionals, and consumers. This analysis highlights the active role of practitioners in realizing policies for sustainable consumption. It has implications for policy makers and analysts: Reflexive policies should heed to actors' unfolding interpretations as they can take the policy process in different directions.
Opportunities for Interdisciplinary Research on School Catering
Acta Ethn., 2023
In Hungary, about half of the 3-18 age group has regularly used school food service. This paper focuses on the operation and social embeddedness of school canteens and the at-home eating habits of the families involved. My conclusions are based on the findings of my interdisciplinary research group. Ethnographers from the RCH Institute of Ethnology and dietitians from the National Institute of Pharmacy and Nutrition have been studying school food from 2018 to 2023. We selected a few model settlements: in addition to the capital, Budapest, three smaller towns, and two villages. Through questionnaires, interviews, and fieldwork observations, we investigated cooking, serving, meal courses, meal time, eating habits, preferences, as well as the nutritional knowledge of students, teachers, kitchen staff, and parents. Our goal, among other things, is to collect best practices and facilitate communication between participants. Some examples from our research highlight the special role of the centrally regulated school food in local food culture, and difficulties with social and historical roots can occasionally hamper school lunches in becoming a socially accepted model of a healthy diet. The school canteen works best at sites where cooking takes place within the school premises. There is a strong connection between the kitchen staff and the teachers, and they work together in the interest of the children. The value of food and its appreciation is demonstrated by how it is treated and how it is talked about. Communication about food in the canteen should be based on food preparation at home, where parents and children work together. The operation of canteens has become particularly problematic following the measures introduced during the coronavirus pandemic. A sustainable, enjoyable canteen can only be realized through the regular communication of schools and school kitchens, as well as children and their parents. Our findings are presented to our respondents, along with providing them with a comparison of different examples.
Marketing an Environmentally Sustainable Catering Model
Advances in Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, and E-Services
This chapter presents a novel case study of a diet sustainability model implemented at Medley Hall, an on-campus student accommodation facility at a university in Victoria, Australia. Diet sustainability refers to measures to minimise adverse environmental impacts attributable to food production. A qualitative evaluation of this initiative was conducted during 2016 including interviews with both residents and staff. The results depict a grass-roots initiative that evolved to become a deeply embedded component of organisational identity. Social marketing strategies were employed at multiple governance levels, including: (i) residents, (ii) staff and (iii) college. The evaluation data from this study provides indication of the key drivers of success in motivating consumers (residents) to engage with and embrace diet sustainability interventions and demonstrates the utility of community-based social marketing (CBSM) in informing such initiatives.
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New Medicine, 2016
Introduction. Public catering (also known as mass catering) is an area of nutrition of the population by which the frequency of nutrition-related diseases can be significantly mitigated with the introduction of effective preventive measures. This hypothesis is supported by several studies from all over the world. The analysis of these studies enables a more accurate view on the efficiency of regulative legal measures adopted with regard to public catering. Aim. The aim of this study was to study legal regulations of different countries that are similar to Hungarian Ministerial Decree No. 37/2014 (IV.30) EMMI on the nutritional regulations of public catering, as well as to compare the results of our survey, conducted in order to assess the efficacy of the aforementioned Hungarian legal act, with data concerning nutrition of children from other countries, with the emphasis on Slovakia. Material and methods. The study was conducted between November 2015 and March 2016. 173 Hungarian catering managers, as well as 53 Hungarian and 40 Slovak school children who regularly eat meals provided by public catering, participated in our study. All the participants were selected randomly. We processed and aggregated the data obtained and performed statistical tests, using Microsoft Excel and the R Project software. We compared the menus available in schools to the applicable legal regulations and analysed them, using the NutriCompÉtrend Sport 3.03 (Hungarian version of NutriComp Diet Sport 3.03) software. Results. We discovered that the main factor which influenced the opinion of children on their meals was their taste, but external factors influencing their perception of the meal (such as the appearance of the meal, its taste, general cleanliness, being familiar with the food served, healthiness of the meal and presence of friends) were also important, which was independent from their country of origin. The participating Hungarian children more frequently than Slovak children described their meals as undersalted. Only a small percentage of the participants studied the menu attentively. Energy content and nutritive value of the meals offered by public catering services differed significantly and the analysed menus failed to meet the governmental recommendations accurately in both countries. Energy content and salt content were not consistent with the recommendations in both countries. Even though the majority (87%) of the public catering service kitchens in Hungary introduced some required technical or technological alterations during the grace period allowed by the Decree No. 37/2014 EMMI, the majority of them (62%) still needed further alterations at the time of the study in order to fully comply with the Decree, as declared by managers of the catering services that participated in our study.