Autor(es): Viegas, Cláudia ; Rocha, Ada
Data: 2024
Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/18009
Origem: Repositório Científico do Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa
Assunto(s): Public health; Food service; Social marketing; Mediterranean diet; Academic community; Health literacy
Food service is an important setting for public health interventions, educating consumers, and modulating behaviors through the meals provided. Social Marketing is one of the strategies designed to promote behavior change, in which contributions to the health and well-being of consumers are widely recognized. This project aims to identify the compliance of food service menus with the Mediterranean Diet (MD) in public high education institutes (HEI) canteens, pinpointing opportunities to intervene, namely: 1) promoting changes in the food offer addressing proximity to the MD, creating, and offering plant-based meals, with seasonable and local food products and 2) developing tailored social marketing strategies to engage stakeholders to encourage healthier and sustainable food habits. It gathers a team comprised of nutrition experts on public health and food service, food technologists, gastronomy experts, psychologists, and marketers. To achieve the objectives researchers will: 1) develop an index to evaluate compliance of menus with the MD; 2) define priority stakeholders and define a methodology for engagement; 3) evaluate perceptions, barriers, and facilitators; 4) develop a meal plan framework; 5) develop a new food concept “student bag” (meal on the go) and test it for industry scale-up; 6) use previous diagnosis to develop social marketing strategies directed to stakeholders and consumers to achieve food behavior change and 7) measure the impacts of the implemented strategies. This research intends to create and implement a new healthy and sustainable food service concept, expecting to define the standpoint to inspire other food service settings to achieve an effective and sustainable food offer change and positively influence food service consumers’ food patterns towards Mediterranean recommendations, while addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (3 - good health and 12 - responsible consumption and production; 17 - partnerships for the goals).
