Sustainable public food service laboratory

Public catering services can be a powerful tool to promote health, educate to correct styles and help reduce social inequities, allowing the improvement of users' eating style. In particular, public schools and their canteen services are configured as a privileged environment to successfully activate policies aimed at supporting healthy food choices and promote the well-being of children and the community.
For this reason, with the resolution of the Emilia-Romagna Regional Council n. 741, the Collective Prevention and Public Health Service Directorate General for Personal Care, Health and Welfare of the Emilia-Romagna Region, together with the University of Bologna – Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences and with the specific involvement of the Food Hygiene Services and Nutrition, has launched the ‘Sustainable Food Service Laboratory - LaRiSo’. A participatory living laboratory joined by schools, families, children, chefs, workers, and producers to improve standards on public catering services’ integrated sustainability, with a specific focus on school canteens, and to update the “Linee guida per l'offerta di alimenti e bevande salutari nelle Scuole” transposed with the DGR 418/2012. The Laboratory will promote more sustainable meals and consumption choices, reduce food waste and encourage the donation of surpluses in public canteens through a series of interventions.

The operational plan consists in four main phases:
Phase 1. Establishment of the Laboratory through a formal agreement, and drafting of the work strategy, the project agenda and the virtual platform for materials management.
Phase 2. Development of experiments and engagement actions in the catering service environment, with the aim of involving different stakeholders in the definition of the environmental, social and economic priorities of the meal. The co-design of criteria and/or evaluation forms for sustainability standards will follow, with specific reference to SDGs of the 2030 Agenda.
Phase 3. Testing of the obtained results through pilot projects, to identify critical issues and barriers. Results will be corrected and improved, to ensure their effective applicability in different local contexts.
Phase 4. Inclusion of criteria/evaluation forms in the regional meal standards (“Guidelines for the provision of healthy foods and beverages in Schools”).

The main objective is the Improvement of the integrated sustainability of public canteens of Emilia-Romagna region, with a specific focus on school canteens. Results from the LaRiSo project will contribute to the national and international debate on catering service sustainability and food policies. They will enrich the present knowledge by offering context-dependent evidence where multiple sustainability dimensions are considered. 
Particularly, expected results will focus on the:

• testing of sustainability interventions that can improve the integrated sustainability of school canteens;
• definition of new sustainability indicators and impact-assessment toolkits to be included in the canteens’ guidelines “Linee guida per l'offerta di alimenti e bevande salutari nelle Scuole”;
• development of communication networks across public canteens segments;
• sharing the best regional sustainability practices outside LaRiSo.