Developing tasty, nutritious, sustainable, and local menus for youth, with youth: A Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project

The goal of this project is to develop tasty, nutritious, sustainable, and local food products for school menus: for youth, with youth, using a youth participatory action research (YPAR) methodology.

Our project is directly linked to "Taste and sensory - from farm to fork" as we develop new knowledge about taste and sensory in school-aged children who have a major impact on the Swedish food system with 260 million meals served every year at a price of ~ 7 billion SEK.

In a collaboration between researchers (nutrition, sensory, gastronomy, circular economy), industry (Ahlströms, Warbro Kvarn, and Nordisk Råvara), and the public (Freja school) we meet this goal with four main work packages (WP) as follows: WP1.

Ideate and develop the taste and sensory language with a panel of circa 30 pupils of diverse ages using a YPAR approach.

In WP2 chefs in training at Örebro Grythyttan will develop new school menus based on Swedish ingredients from our partners and the taste and sensory knowledge from WP1. The new menu items will be tested by circa 700 youth in one “proof-of-concept” school using a YPAR approach.

Our panel of taste and sensory trained students will collect feed-back from their peers using tablets to then re-iterate menus with chefs in training. WP3: We build the business case for expanding the selection of Swedish products; and W4. disseminate knowledge. Ultimately, we gain sensory knowledge, and improve food sovereignty.