Sustainable Food Laboratory

Change Focus

• Evaluation and measurement tools: What can and should institutions measure and track as metrics of the health and sustainability of their food system and how can they demonstrate the impact of improvement efforts?
• Budgeting and contracting/bidding process: How can institutional procurement practices be redesigned in ways that both provide suppliers with incentives to source healthy, local, sustainable foods and that can be implemented successfully and cost-efficiently by suppliers and food service companies?
• Food service culture: How can personnel and facilities be supported to develop new and creative ways to procure, cook, serve healthy foods?
• Supply chains: How can both local and sustainable producers be supported and local to global distribution systems be developed for sustainable foods?
• Integrating health goals with sustainable agricultural goals: Where do the goals for reducing obesity and increasing wellness overlap with the goals for increasing sourcing of local and more sustainable foods? How can both communities work together to advocate for change?

Pilot Projects

Web Site: A web-based collaboration and exchange platform for sharing best practices from US and EU experiences is under construction. When finalized, it will operate in English, French, Italian and perhaps Spanish. The heart of the information is a database of institutions that have implemented sustainable food programs organized by project theme (policy development; sustainable supply chain development; educational programs and infrastructures; improvement of tenders and contracts, etc.).

System Change Pilots: A number of pilot projects aimed at system restructuring are being developed to test innovative ideas and approaches on a significant scale. They involve partnerships at continental and/or transatlantic levels that enable participants to develop both common and individual approaches. Some of these partners include hospitals and school systems throughout Europe and the US. At Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia), for example, Lab Team members areworking to transform the food services system for nine health care facilities and two colleges We are looking at how to truly bring together goals for healthy foods and goals for more sustainable foods into a coherent food transformation vision.

Research: Research is being conducted to identify what the key indicators are for sustainability within the public/institutional food system and investigate how these indicators can be monitored to enable (a) the sustainability of existing systems to be analyzed; (b) how change to more sustainable practices can be measured; and (c) how the impact of changes can be measured and quantified (economic; social; environmental. This work is being shared through workshops for Food Lab members and others.