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Sustainability is a central issue in food business and food retailing since approximately 3 years (See Teitscheid 2011). Various influential factors are significant for this development. On the one hand consumers choices are changing (See GFK et al. 2009). They are looking for natural, good and healthy food; they have a longing for home and an intact world (See iSuN 2010). The image of a highly efficient, but often ruthless industrial food production in regards to mankind and nature is not appropriate here. On the other hand, raw materials are scarce and, thus, very valuable. Bad harvests, mostly interpreted as a result of climate change, worldwide increasing consumption and the production of food in favor of energy production instead of nutritional aims, lead to a re-evaluation of agricultural resources and their producers. Within this context, food industry is searching for new forms of cooperation and partnership along the value chain in order to secure their resource basis. In the light of their significant environmental impact, an increasing number of companies also start to work on the environmental assessment and optimization of their products and value chains. Therefore they need employees with valid knowledge and competencies in sustainability and resources management. Based on this demand, the master's program "Sustainable Services and Nutrition Management" started in 2009 in the University of Applied Sciences in Münster (Germany)1. This text reports about how the topic of resource efficiency in food/nutrition industry has been integrated within the study program, which projects have been worked on and what experience could be gained from them.
The nutritional footprint - An assessment tool for health and environmental effects of nutrition
(2014)
Food production is responsible for approximately 17% of Germany's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. After retail, out-of-home catering is the second largest food sales channel in Germany. A variety of means on both the supply and demand side are necessary to stimulate, facilitate and encourage a more sustainable development and minimise GHG emissions in this sector. Nudges are one of these. This paper's focus lies on the demand side. Set in real-world laboratories, we use a standardised empirical approach to compare different nudging interventions belonging to the area of physical environment and consumers’ choice making process. We compare the effects of the same intervention across different settings and the effect of different, sequential nudging interventions in the same setting. Data was collected in eight workplace and school cafeterias in Germany over two project iterations (2016/2017; 2019/2020). A similar intervention design was applied. Comparability was assured by a harmonised menu. The first project iteration revealed that only one nudge (top menu position, +22.5%) led to significant increases in sustainable food choices, while results from the second iteration showed that all nudge interventions (best counter position, +11.6%; top menu position, +6,9%; label plus information, +15.9%) positively influenced consumer choice. Possible explanations such as the stricter compliance to the experimental design in the cafeterias but also societal developments such as the appearance of the Fridays for Future movement are discussed. As results vary between specific locations and settings, our findings suggest that nudges need to be adjusted to situational conditions for achieving highest efficacy.