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Review
. 2020 Jan 18;17(2):621.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph17020621.

Health and Sustainability in Public Meals-An Explorative Review

Karin Höijer  1 , Caroline Lindö  1 , Arwa Mustafa  1 , Maria Nyberg  1 , Viktoria Olsson  1 , Elisabet Rothenberg  1 , Hanna Sepp  1 , Karin Wendin  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Health and Sustainability in Public Meals-An Explorative Review

Karin Höijer et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

The world is facing a number of challenges related to food consumption. These are, on the one hand, health effects and, on the other hand, the environmental impact of food production. Radical changes are needed to achieve a sustainable and healthy food production and consumption. Public and institutional meals play a vital role in promoting health and sustainability, since they are responsible for a significant part of food consumption, as well as their "normative influence" on peoples' food habits. The aim of this paper is to provide an explorative review of the scientific literature, focusing on European research including both concepts of health and sustainability in studies of public meals. Of >3000 papers, 20 were found to satisfy these criteria and were thus included in the review. The results showed that schools and hospitals are the most dominant arenas where both health and sustainability have been addressed. Three different approaches in combining health and sustainability have been found, these are: "Health as embracing sustainability", "Sustainability as embracing health" and "Health and sustainability as separate concepts". However, a clear motivation for addressing both health and sustainability is most often missing.

Keywords: Europe; health; public meals; sustainability.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The figure illustrates different sectors serving meals to users. The sizes of the boxes correspond to the number of meals served in each arena, based on a Swedish context [33,34,35].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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