Title: Food Environments for Planetary Health: Impact of School Nutrition Standards
Funding Body: German Ministry of Education and Research
Funding Period: 2023-2026
Partners: LMU München, University of Göttingen
Background:
- Globally, over 390 million school-aged children and adolescents are living with overweight and obesity. Childhood obesity is a significant risk factor for type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and psychosocial consequences. A suboptimal diet, characterized by excessive intake of foods high in added sugar, salt, and fat and a deficiency of micronutrients, is one of the major behavioral risk factors for obesity and other non-communicable diseases. Although policy recommendations for improving child nutrition exist in Germany (e.g., DGE quality standards for school meals), there is currently no nationwide implementation of such policies. Therefore, to support evidence-based decision-making, it is crucial to predict and evaluate the short- and long-term school nutrition policies on health, economic, and environmental outcomes.
Objectives:
- The overall goal of the project is to support the development of food environments that promote healthy and sustainable diets to maximize human health and well-being while decreasing food system‘s environmental impact. Our goal is to model 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.
Methods:
Using established modeling methods and epidemiologic risk equation systems as well as context specific data on the effect of diet on risk facors and health care expenditures, we will model changes in dietary intake through the implementation of healthy nutrition standards into changes of risk factor and disease distribution as well as into changes in health care related cost. We will further quantify environmental impacts by translating the reduction of specific food groups through decreased supply in school settings into greenhouse-gas-equivalents and other relevant metrics based on life-cycle assessment method.
Impact:
The project will allow a better understanding of the potential role of healthy and sustainable school nutrition standards in improving population health and reducing the environmental footprint of the food system and inform the public debate and ongoing legislative processes.
Kontakt: Xiao Tan
