From farm to school: investigating the potential of school food environments to transform the food system

Sustainable transformations of the food system are today at the heart of the global debate. To comply with the widely agreed need for change, a large scientific interest has been dedicated to the potential of school food environments for transforming food production and consumption trajectories. Besides being responsible for the nutritional quality of children’s diets, school meals also shape behaviours of the next generation consumers. Given that the relationships between the dietary patterns, consumption habits of children, the canteen setting, and the selection of food products for school consumption are complex and multifactorial, enlarging the body of analyses is essential for understanding patterns on how food is served and consumed. To this scope, this thesis adopts multiple approaches to understand sustainability dynamics behind school food environments and offers science-based implications derived from rigorous and reproducible social-science research. In particular, three studies are conducted: 1) a systematic literature review to explore the role of short food supply chains in supporting advancements towards global sustainability goalsin view of sustainable public procurement practices in schools 2) an evaluation study with a randomized control trial design to assess if inverting the sequence of dishes served in school canteens is an effective intervention for reducing food waste in primary school 3) an indicator-based assessment tool to measure the sustainability of school food environments integrating nutritional, environmental and social implications via an easy-to-understand scoring system. Results of this thesis provide food professionals and policymakers with quantitative insights on areas of improvement of the sustainability status of school food environments. On this basis, effective tailor-made strategies can be designed in schools to foster food system transformations and tackle the fundamental goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.