Growing concern about issues surrounding climate change and the environment has led to a recent focus on local food strategies and a change in consumer buying behaviour towards food in the European Union (EU). Accordingly, there has been an increasing demand for foods from local and regional sources as well as from sustainable production regimes. Although this trend seems to be driven primarily by household consumption, public food procurement has also begun to adopt this idea and has taken on a new and more critical view on its sourcing strategies. Such food strategies seem to offer benefits for local farmers and food processors. At the same time, they may also offer opportunities to develop new educational and healthpromoting links between the actors of public food systems, such as young people in schools, and farmers. This contribution to ''quality of life'' is often referred to as social innovation. This is primarily because it improves social capital by bringing together new actors to address important societal challenges. Achieving sustainable school food systems is considered a challenge, and research-based knowledge is in demand in relation to multi-component interventions. This perspective article reports on early insights from a pilot case within the local food project LOMA-Nymarkskolen in Svendborg (DK). The findings of this project are used to evaluate whether local food strategies are an effective method of social innovation. The pilot case is a whole school, workshop and curriculum-based intervention in which 6th-grade students participate in cooking their own school food for one week using products from local farms. Data from the pilot case indicate that local food strategies help establish new educational links between schools and local producers and thereby contribute to students' food literacy, health and quality of life in a way that qualifies to the notion of social innovation.
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how students’ participation in an integrated school food program was related to the development of components of food and health-related action competence (F & HRAC). These components were understood to be the knowledge, insight, motivation, ownership and social skills that made students able to take action regarding food and health in everyday life. Design/methodology/approach – Research was undertaken as a single case study of the development of an integrated education and health program called LOMA-Local Food (LOMA) in a secondary school in Denmark. Qualitative methods were applied, including an action research component, where researcher and teachers examined how students developed action competence. The program was based on a whole school approach with the aim of improving F & HRAC. As a way to obtain this, students participated in planning, preparing, cooking and serving their own school food as integrated in curriculum. The study applied the Health Promoting Schools’ (HPS) conceptual framework and the I nvestigation, V ision, A ction and C hange (IVACE) approach. Findings – Students who participated in LOMA educational activities became motivated for developing a food F & HRAC, which included components such as knowledge, insight, motivation, ownership, action experience, commitment, cooperation and critical thinking. Students developed practical skills related to food and health, when they were cooking healthy school food together with professionals and peers. The study also points to the importance of capacity building among teachers. The IVACE matrix is suggested as a relevant tool for monitoring forms of participation that contributes to students’ development of F & HRAC. Practical implications – There were indications of how participation in LOMA contributed to students’ development of F & HRAC. The practical implication of this is that “setting” is very important for the success of food and health education initiatives. In this integrated approach the production kitchen and the dining hall are indispensable. Also the new organization of the school day and the introduction of a shared daily meal are important practical components for the improvement of the learning environment. The possibility of combining theory and practice seem conducive for students’ achievement of action competence. Social implications – The current study is an example of how the IVACE matrix can be applied in order to plan, conduct and evaluate LOMA educational activities, which could be considered as a contribution to the HPS scientific community. It would be useful for other schools that intend to apply the LOMA approach. However, more research is needed, where teachers, students, staff and other stakeholders collaborate in an action research process. This could promote students’ health and support other initiatives regarding public health, sustainable development and democracy. Originality/value – This research may have implications for the way that school food programs are developed and implemented if they are to make a contribution to students’ development of F & HRAC. Taking the political interest for research-based interventions into account, it is important that future strategies include teachers’ capacity building. Research is also needed regarding further development and test of the IVACE matrix as a method in participatory, health education approaches. This should be seen in combination with a renewed focus on integrated curricula models related to the on-going discussion on redesign of western school curricula.
LOMA is an abbreviation for ‘LOkal Mad’ (‘local food’ in English) and is a school meal program that takes a local perspective on student participation in preparing, serving and learning about food. This is done in a way that includes collaboration with local food producers, the students’ parents and professional actors in the local community. The idea for LOMA as a special approach to school meals arose in 2009-2011, initiated by a group of people (including the authors of this chapter) who shared a special interest in an integrated approach to food and meals that included health promotion, education, sustainable development and social innovation in school. This case study investigates whether LOMA was effective with regard to health promotion and social innovation. The study includes data from three schools that had different levels of experience with LOMA. The study applies the evaluation method ‘RE-AIM’, based on qualitative data from interviews with the headmasters of the schools. The ‘RE-AIM’ method was chosen because it provides an opportunity to describe the complexity that characterizes social interventions. The results indicate that LOMA was an effective intervention in all three schools with regard to health promotion and social innovation. Despite the tremendous potential of the program, however, other sociocultural dynamics seem to influence Danish decisionmakers in a way that is not favorable to public support for such school food systems.
Schools are important health settings for children (Jensen and Simovska 2005; SHE Network 2018;Simovska 2012). Impacted by national, regional, and school policies, the experience of health-and particularly nutrition-in schools is entirely subject to the strength of those policies. In Denmark, as in many other countries such as Norway, New Zealand, and Australia, there is no national school food program to ensure proper nutrition during the school day for all students. Parents and caregivers in Denmark are required to prepare and pack lunch and an afternoon snack for students on a daily basis (Sabinsky 2013).Given the diverse circumstances in which children live, the effect of this policy impacts health and learning inequitably. Students from vulnerable families are more likely to bring insufficient meals from home to school, if they bring any meals at all (Rasmussen et al. 2019). The general legislation for Danish schools, in Danish: Folkeskolen (Retsinformation 2018), prescribes that food and meal systems in schools "can" be supported by municipal systems (Stovgaard et al. 2017). However, the reliance on caregivers to provide food results in a food environment based on "free-choice" (Stovgaard and Wistoft 2018). This can be characterized as a result of a market-driven neoliberal approach, in which families are encouraged to buy all of their food in the supermarket. This situation leads to a certain "supermarketization" of the way that food is organized and talked about in schools. The packed lunch is "from supermarket" and reflects the social status of the family. The quality of the packed lunch varies a lot, and sometimes it is not even brought to school, not eaten in school, or not stored at the right temperature. Furthermore, the packed lunch is often not adequate to cover the nutritional needs for students (Sabinsky 2013;Stovgaard and Wistoft 2018).
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