Development of good, nutritious, sustainable and local menus for young people, with young people

In a Forma’s call “Taste and sensory – from farm to table”, ten projects were granted funds, of which the project “Development of good, nutritious, sustainable and local menus for young people, with young people” was one.

The overall goal of the project is to create school lunches that are good, healthy, climate-friendly and within the school’s tight budget. In order to succeed in producing good food that students like, the project will use the YPAR (Youth Participatory Action Research) method, which involves collaborating with the students to produce workable results.

Marie Palmnäs-Bédard from Chalmers Industriteknik will lead a work package that will help Swedish companies with business cases for new menus. Marie will also be part of the advisory group for the project. The project will work with a local school, the city of Gothenburg, chefs, experts in sensory evaluation and more. The project is divided into three stages, where the first is to see what kind of food products the companies have to offer, and then determine which products and food the children like that fit within the school’s budget. After that, a whole menu will be created for the children to taste and assess. Menus are then developed that can be scaled to be environmentally friendly and nutritious.