Opportunities for and Limits to Cooperation between School and Families in Sustainable Public Food Procurement

Elena Pagliarino,Elena Santanera,Greta Falavigna

doi:10.3390/su13168808

Elena Pagliarino, Elena Santanera + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168808

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Abstract

This paper describes a research project, carried out in an Italian public school, to assess whether parents were willing to take part in food procurement decisions, as well as their ability to accurately predict what foods children would pick at school lunch and their propensity to support sustainable food choices made by the school. The methodology included a questionnaire, issued to 500 parents, and an in-depth study of 138 child/parent pairs. The study comprised: (i) presentation of an innovative recipe in the weekly menu of the school canteen; (ii) meal observations of children’s intake at school lunch during the week of the menu modification; (iii) collection of both parents’ and children’s reports on their choices of recipes from the modified weekly menu. The results are commented in light of two important changes that have recently affected Italian public school food procurement: the opening of school canteens to lunches brought from home and the measures adopted since 2020 to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Both events go in the direction of delegating to parents the multifaceted role of the school in the food arena. The article concludes that the results of the study should discourage this approach.

Highlights

Five-hundred parents whose children stay at school for lunch answered the questionnaire (45% of the number of children attending the school), aimed at assessing the families’ interest in becoming members of the school canteen committee and willingness to pay for sustainable innovation in the school menu
In the Italian school system, parents can become involved, through the representative body of the canteen committee, in the definition of lunch menus, making proposals and asking for the elimination of recipes that they consider unwanted by the children
In this type of collaboration, parents are not very reliable because they are not good at predicting their children’s choices and tend to eliminate recipes that they believe their children will not like, even though they are sustainable

Summary

Introduction

488 [71] established a direct connection between public sector catering and the use of high-quality, local and organic food. Art. 59, comma 4, “Measures to facilitate the development of organic and quality agriculture” states that: “To guarantee the promotion of organic agricultural production of quality food products, public institutions that operate school and hospital canteens will include in the daily diet the use of organic, typical and traditional products as well as those from denominated areas. Thanks to the support of this “very innovative piece of legislation that establishes a direct and explicit link between organic and local food and public sector catering [9] In 2017, the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies created a fund for organic school canteens, with a substantial financial endowment: 4 million euro in 2017, 10 million both in 2018 and 2019 and 5 million starting from 2020, cf Decree Law no. In 2017, the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies created a fund for organic school canteens, with a substantial financial endowment: 4 million euro in 2017, 10 million both in 2018 and 2019 and 5 million starting from 2020, cf. Decree Law no. 50 of 2017 [72]

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