Does organic school food service provide more healthy eating environments than their non organic counterparts?

Summary

Organic food strategies are increasingly developing within European school food services at the same time as these services are being involved in measures aiming at promoting healthy eating at school and counteracting obesity. Schools have an important role to play in teaching children fundamental life skills, including good food habits according to a number of authoritative policy papers from Council of Europe, the WHO and the EU platform. Although there are great national differences, European school food culture seems to be in a transitional state in which both healthy eating as well as sustainable consumption strategies are contributing to shaping the future school food culture. It is therefore imperative to study how these changes in agendas influences each other and to study the associations between healthy eating and organic supply strategies at school. This has been the point of departure for Working Package 5 (WP5): Nutrition and Health.
The WP5 study has included Denmark, Norway, Germany, Finland and Italy. The WP has been asking questions about the possible spin offs and ramification on nutrition and health that the emerging public organic food strategies might have had. The WP is a part of the project “innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth” (iPOPY) and the WP5 has been carried out by Aalborg University Denmark. The research presented here has been conducted in Germany, Finland, and Italy.