Getting in touch with food again – Making Europeans responsible consumers Erasmus Project

Project Title

Getting in touch with food again – Making Europeans responsible consumers

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

The project was based on our overall impression that – over the past decades – the global food market has become so complex in many ways that it is becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to make the right choices when purchasing their daily food. On the one hand, the food industry is daily providing consumers with a huge and partly exotic range of products from all over the world. Competition in the food trade and the consumer’s demands have lead to an overdimensional resource intensity, resulting from exports and imports of goods to and from countries worldwide. The complexities of the global food market have not only lead to a growing lack of transparency and awareness in regard to the origins of our food but also to its quality. Again, also in accord with the demands of the modern and time-pressured consumer, the food industry is developing methods of producing and growing food in ever more refined ways in order to provide him with food that is spotless, keeps well, has already been processed and as such easy to prepare – besides fulfilling the desire that food should still be tasty, colourful. All in all, the food industry is certainly offering consumers products which comply with their needs and tastes, however, adults and students alike are slowly losing touch with what they are taking in day for day: not only in regard to the origin of their food but also to its quality.

Therefore, the project intended to support consumers to get in touch again with the food they are eating, primarily addressing students between 14 and 16 years old, who would by then have already acquired some basic knowledge in regard to environmental challenges, the globalised economy and nutritional needs in the context of the Social and Natural Sciences subjects. Our partnership was carried out with the Julius-Stursberg-Gymnasium in Germany, the Stryn ungdumsskule in Norway and the Viljandi Gümnaasium in Estonia. All in all, 24 students from each particpating school were involved, besides around 6 to 12 teachers from each school.

One of our key objectives for the partnership was to critically evaluate the implications of ill-informed consumer behaviour in a globalized food market by creating awareness for the impact it has on our health and our environment, with the intention to promote more responsible consumer behaviour and, thus, encourage active citizenship through which they can also contribute to meeting European challenges which – at first sight – appear beyond their means of influence.

Our main activities that contributed to achieving our objectives were, on the one hand, carried through in (extra-) curricular workshops at our respective schools and focused on students gaining in-depth knowledge about the major aspects related to our topic, such as the effects of an unbalanced diet on our health (obesity, diebetis etc.), the wide use of artificial ingredients in a lot of processed food (additives, food clouring etc.), GMO food, chemicals in farming and the environmentally-damaging resource intensity of many products we buy. The results of their research were presented at the short-term exchanges. On the other hand, out-of-school learning activities during the short-term exchanges added to encouraging students to learn how they can develop a more responsible consumer behaviour in both dimensions, e.g. through visits to and lectures at academic institutions, regional farms and businesses which provided all participants with basic knowledge concerning the vital elements of a healthy and balanced diet, the reliabilty of food labeling, biological farming, low-carbon trade inititiatives, the academic field of Green Logistics. Moreover, cooking workshops contributed to making students interested in producing basic food products by themselves, such as bread, butter and chocolate, and to turning to seasonal, regional and biological products from which they created nourishing snacks and dishes.

The students’ research and learning experiences resulted in a series of posters which was created with the support of professional photographers and graphic designers with the purpose to appeal to consumers to take on a resonsible consumer behaviour. They will permanantly be exhibited in our schools and have also been presented to the farms and businesses that support our initiatives as stakeholders. Another main product was a cooking calendar which contains recipes for healthy dishes that were produced in the cooking workshops by the students, also revealing the nutritional composition of the dishes as well as showing photos of the dishes.

The impact of the project revealed itself through the pronounced interest that students showed in all stages of the project, in their results as well as in additional initiatives that have changed the range of food offers at two of our school canteens and that have lead to implementing healthy breakfast breaks in younger classes at one of our schools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 119355 Eur

Project Coordinator

Julius-Stursberg-Gymnasium & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Viljandi Gümnaasium
• Stryn ungdomsskule