Abstract
Societal-wide transformation of our food system is necessary to secure sustainable food for the future. Such a large-scale transformation requires pulling equally large levers of change. Food procurement offers one such lever as it is an aggregator of food demand for the masses. In order to measure food procurement, an all-encompassing interpretation of a sustainable meal is needed to account for all social, economic and environmental variables. In addition, professional kitchens and procurement officers alike need to be equipped with holistic tools and simple outputs for communicating sustainable progress. This study outlines the development of a holistic advisory tool that is co-created together with stakeholder feedback and industry experts. The tool is a cloud service built with open source tools that rely on indicators focused on the biosphere base of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Wedding Cake Framework. Potential indicators are screened using a novel interpretation of SMART criteria, the SMARTc Food Procurement Indicator Selection Criteria to ensure outputs are easy to estimate based on current data, can be achieved within current budgets and are easily communicable in the fast-paced gastronomy sector. While there is no literary consensus on the best food procurement variables, nor how to measure them, the holistic advisory tool focuses on Plant-Meat-Dairy Ratio, organic percentage, carbon footprint and seasonality. Moreover, in the absence of industry standards, such a comprehensive tool offers the possibility to measure and compare sustainable food procurement to planetary health diet recommendations and between professional kitchens themselves. Preliminary results are positive, however further development is needed to improve precision, comparability and interpretability. The ongoing development and widespread application of this tool will aid the process of procuring sustainable food while simultaneously contributing to measurable transformation of the food system.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Artikelnummer | 101087 |
| Tidsskrift | International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science |
| Vol/bind | 39 |
| Antal sider | 11 |
| ISSN | 1878-450X |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2025 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:In parallel to indicator selection, interface enhancements were made to improve efficiency and user-interface design efforts were implemented to improve simplicity when communicating results to kitchen personnel. These were ongoing in response to the overarching iterate nature of the development with the majority of improvements made in phase 4. Extensive database developments focused on information handling and database development include (i) Data was collected manually via stakeholder engagement, (ii) The database architecture was developed to be used as a cloud service. The cloud used is Amazon Web Services (AWS). The services are based on open source tools: \u201CLAMP\u201D, Linux, Apache webserver, MySQL database and PHP programming language. Graphics were created using (Highcharts, 2023), (iii) The database was constructed to be easily modified for data interoperability and easily scalable for further expansion, (iv) User-Experience methods and stakeholder feedback was used to develop the front end complete with simple interface for behavioural nudges, (v) The database works with 19 languages to support region specific users, (vi) Data processing was based on the DTU Frida classification of food (National Food InstituteTechnical University of Denmark, 2023), with translations to/from the Eat-Lancet classification combined a mixture of relevant attributes ranging from season, country of origin over species to organic, welfare and other certifications (Willett et al., 2019). Where possible, the universal unique identifier for the food description as defined by GS-1 (GS1, 2023) was used to accommodate for future integrations with data from other sources.This publication received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 862716.
Funding Information:
This publication received funding from the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 862716.
Publisher Copyright:
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