Abstract
Questions have arisen about the sustainability of the industrialised food system. Alternatives like urban agriculture have emerged to reduce the negative social, environmental and health impacts of industrial agriculture. Such new food supply chains can change the way that people acquire and process food. This study looks at high-tech indoor gardening practices in nursing homes for elderly people, studying four nursing homes in the Dutch city of Velp. We used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to collect data, using site visits, a survey amongst employees, and semi-structured interviewees with residents and decision makers. Inspired by social practice theory, we aimed to understand the transformation of existing practices, investigating how the gardens affect cooking and eating practices, and how their constitutive elements of meaning, material and competences enable these transformations. Our work shows that the indoor gardens resulted in an integration of gardening and the resulting harvest into cooking practices, which in turn transformed residents’ eating practices. Appreciation of the taste of fresh vegetables and appearance of the meal decorated by fresh vegetables, as well as observing the growth of plants and their use, holds value for the elderly residents. Employees welcome the possibility to serve healthier meals. The integration of indoor gardens in existing cooking practices is more successful when employees have gardening and/or cooking competences, when they enjoy cooking and when they do not already cook with fresh ingredients. The gardens are more easily integrated when they are easily accessible. The materiality of the gardens does not require fully equipped kitchens.
Highlights
The number of Dutch people over eighty years old is expected to grow from 0.8 million to 1.2 million in 2030 [1]
We first focus on the cooking practices of employees, after which we describe the effects on the eating practices of residents
Future research should include more nursing homes to get higher sample sizes for more dependable data. The aim of this explorative study was to understand to what extent high-tech indoor gardens influence the cooking and eating practices in nursing homes, and what is needed to enable such changes
Summary
The number of Dutch people over eighty years old is expected to grow from 0.8 million to 1.2 million in 2030 [1]. More than fifteen percent of elderly people of 75 years or older live in a residential institution for long-term care [2]. In addition to the current challenges of nursing homes to provide their residents with proper care, the Dutch government expects an increase in the needs of these vulnerable elderly [3]. Different studies have shown that malnutrition is a common problem among elderly people living in nursing homes [6]. 1. How long have you been working in this sector (elderly care)? 2. How long have you been working at Innoforte? 5. Innoforte is working on the development of healing environments. In what other ways does Innoforte try to work on healing environments? 3. For how long have you been working in elderly care? What is your role within Innoforte? (You can tick multiple boxes) Food assistant
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