Work Package 1

School nutrition standards

School nutrition standards are a key policy for supporting healthy and sustainable diets on a population level. Worldwide, more than one billion children and adolescents attend school on school days, and are thus exposed to the school food environment for an extended period of time during crucial life phases. Traditionally, school nutrition standards have been focused on aspects of individual health, but some countries, including Germany and Sweden, have started to integrate aspects of environmental sustainability into their official guidelines.

To support the development and implementation of school nutrition standards informed by a planetary health perspective, we will produce three deliverables:

  1. A Cochrane Review on the environmental and human health impacts of school food environment policies and interventions (global perspective).
     
  2. A case study on the population-level implementation of healthy and sustainable school nutrition standards in Germany, exploring the societal and political dynamics that have led to the adoption of such standards in some of Germany’s states, and the legal, administrative, and funding mechanisms used to put the respective policies into practice.
     
  3. A modeling study on the long-term nutritional, health, economic and environmental impacts of a scaled-up, nation-wide implementation of healthy and sustainable school nutrition standards in Germany.
     

Publications from this work package

Conference abstracts:

  • von Philipsborn P, Holliday N, Mareis T, Klinger C: Barriers and facilitators for the adoption of mandatory school nutrition standards in Germany: protocol for a qualitative case study. Abstract presented at the Hidden Hunger Congress, Hohenheim, Germany, September 2023. (Online, open access)
  • Holliday N, Klinger C, Durao S, Griebler U, Laxy M, Mareis T, Schwingshackl L, Rehfuess E, von Philipsborn P: School nutrition standards for improving diets and health – a Cochrane Review Protocol. Abstract presented at the Hidden Hunger Congress, Hohenheim, Germany, September 2023.