To deliver on its objectives, FEAST focuses on three key areas (Fig 1), which are detailed below with the corresponding work and achievements to date:
UNDERSTANDING THE CURRENT FOOD SYSTEM IN EUROPE (INDIVIDUALS + FOOD ENVIRONEMNTS)
- Individuals: We aimed to understand the barriers and facilitators to people in Europe eating healthier and more sustainable diets. To this end, we conducted and analysed results of a large-scale survey across 27 European countries with over 27,000 respondents.
- Food Environments: We also aimed to understand how different stakeholders (private and public sectors and communities) could shape food environments so that they were healthier, more sustainable and more just. Through engagement with stakeholders across the private and public sectors as well as individuals and communities across multiple European countries, we collated evidence-based recommendations for these key stakeholders to support the transition to food systems that are healthier, more sustainable and more just.
CO-DESIGNING SOLUTIONS
- Community-based: We worked with 12 living labs (LL) across Europe to co-design community-based solutions, and associated business cases, to support people to eat healthier and more sustainable diets. The LL approached the topic of healthy and sustainable diets through different angles because of differences in geographicalk contexts as well as target vulnerable groups. Despite this, the interventions could be categorised into four broad groups: Food Education; Work with Smallholder Farmers; Food Environments; Public Food Procurement.
- Technology-based: We also explored technology-based solutions to support vulnerable groups to transition to healthier and more sustainable diets through hackathons conducted in four cities across Europe.
-Low-income families & food waste (Miilan)
-People with learning differences at risk of excess weight and related health problems (London)
-Children with Type 1 Diabetes (Kaunas)
-People at risk of social exclusion from urban communities; utilising community gardens as a solution space (Berlin)
Six prototypes were developed demonstrating innovative, user-centred responses to systemic challenges in food and health. Each intervention tackled a specific challenge linked to a vulnerable group and the developed solutions go beyond the state of the art by combining co-design directly with vulnerable groups, digital fabrication, and open-source principles. Prototypes are currently being tested and options for raising additional funds is being explored.
EXPLORING POLICIES TO SUPPORT THE TRANSITION TO HEALTHIER, MORE SUSTAINABLE AND MORE JUST FOOD SYSTEMS
We are creating a common modelling framework that can be used across regions (both cities and rural areas) to support policy makers to understand the food system solutions that can positively impact health, the environment and the economy. As one part of this process, we have identified multilevel drivers of food choice and behaviours of populations with low-socioeconomic status with children in Avignon, France and Alto Minho, Portugal with the goal of developing a framework that can apply across multiple contexts.
Additionally, we explored the barriers and facilitators that impede policies that can support healthier, more sustainable and more just food systems, including the main stakeholders involved in these processes. To this end, we focused on frames, because they are an important factor in policy-making processes. The frame analyses in FEAST aimed to:
- Identify the frames that are relevant for the transition to healthier and more sustainable food systems.
- Explore how these frames interact with power dynamics in food systems and how they can influence FEAST activities and goals
- Develop counter-frames as a form of facilitator and innovation, to confront frames currently hindering the transition to healthier, more sustainable and more just food systems.
