IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/iefi14/199369.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Children and School Meals: The New Party to Negotiations for Sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • Mikkola, Minna
  • Post, Anna

Abstract

School meals, served free for young people at primary and secondary education in Finland and Sweden, imply the welfare state’s effort at being responsible for the wellbeing of young people. This aim is very concretely expressed by the provision of statutory school meals which satisfy about one third of daily nutritional needs, offer a broad food cultural selection of meals with different ingredients and are meant to introduce children to table manners (Finnish National Board of Education, 2008; Lintukangas et al., 2008; Valtion ravitsemusneuvottelukunta, 2008). This ‘proper meal’ (Murcott, 1982) additionally reflects strongly the scientific view on nutrition (Valtion ravitsemusneuvottelukunta, 2008), and thereby connects with European historical challenges to enhance the poor nutrition status of children from families of limited means (Ahonen, 2003; Morgan and Sonnino, 2008; Spigarolo et al., 2010). The welfare state thus enters the sphere of responsibility of the family for their children (Rothstein, 1996), as it eases parental care by removing the cost and effort of meal provision from the family to the public actor. This school meal system thus not only aims to offer collateral support for learning but to promote healthy eating as a condition for public health. Currently, the focus of school catering aims to expand from the individual health to environmental health and even wider to sustainability (Morgan and Sonnino, 2008). This view has been evident in public caterers’ efforts across Finland (Mikkola, 2009a) as well as in individual rectors’ work for joining programs such as the Green Flag, entailing occasionally the provision of organic food as a proxy to sustainability (Mikkola, 2009b). These interests also draw on Union and national level policy support (ICLEI, 2008; Ministry of Environment, 2009) whereby the school meal becomes “a prism” of sustainability interests (Morgan and Sonnino, 2008), promoted by public actors (Mikkola, 2009; Morgan and Sonnino, 2008; Spigarolo et al., 2010). It is highly relevant to explore the impacts of these policies on children through activities such as public catering; ‘does it deliver’ the expected benefits in terms of increasing sustainability orientations by the children? This paper probes into children’s responses to school meals, with emphasis on the potential to learn healthy and sustainable eating practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Mikkola, Minna & Post, Anna, 2014. "Children and School Meals: The New Party to Negotiations for Sustainability," 2014 International European Forum, February 17-21, 2014, Innsbruck-Igls, Austria 199369, International European Forum on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:iefi14:199369
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.199369
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/199369/files/26-Mikkola.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.199369?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harriet Friedmann, 2007. "Scaling up: Bringing public institutions and food service corporations into the project for a local, sustainable food system in Ontario," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 24(3), pages 389-398, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alison Blay-Palmer & Roberta Sonnino & Julien Custot, 2016. "A food politics of the possible? Growing sustainable food systems through networks of knowledge," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 33(1), pages 27-43, March.
    2. Shawn A. Trivette, 2017. "Invoices on scraps of paper: trust and reciprocity in local food systems," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(3), pages 529-542, September.
    3. Rebecca Dunning & J. Bloom & Nancy Creamer, 2015. "The local food movement, public-private partnerships, and food system resiliency," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 5(4), pages 661-670, December.
    4. Naomi Beingessner & Amber J. Fletcher, 2020. "“Going local”: farmers’ perspectives on local food systems in rural Canada," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(1), pages 129-145, March.
    5. Lori Stahlbrand, 2016. "The Food For Life Catering Mark: Implementing the Sustainability Transition in University Food Procurement," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-19, September.
    6. Robbins, M.J., 2013. "Locating food sovereignty: geographical and sectoral distance in the global food system," ISS Working Papers - General Series 557, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    7. Hingley, Martin & Mikkola, Minna & Canavari, Maurizio & Asioli, Daniele, 2012. "Local and Sustainable Food Supply: The Role of European Retail Consumer Co-operatives," International Journal on Food System Dynamics, International Center for Management, Communication, and Research, vol. 2(4), pages 1-17, March.
    8. Minh Ngo & Michael Brklacich, 2014. "New farmers’ efforts to create a sense of place in rural communities: insights from southern Ontario, Canada," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(1), pages 53-67, March.
    9. Erin Nelson & Laura Gómez Tovar & Rita Schwentesius Rindermann & Manuel Gómez Cruz, 2010. "Participatory organic certification in Mexico: an alternative approach to maintaining the integrity of the organic label," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 27(2), pages 227-237, June.
    10. René Audet & Sylvain Lefèvre & Éliane Brisebois & Mahdiah El-Jed, 2017. "Structuring Tensions and Key Relations of Montreal Seasonal Food Markets in the Sustainability Transition of the Agri-Food Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-16, February.
    11. Virginie Baritaux & Carole Chazoule, 2018. "Légitimité et positionnement des marchés de gros dans les dynamiques de relocalisation de l’alimentation : les cas du marché de Lyon Corbas et du MIN de Grenoble," Post-Print hal-03122984, HAL.
    12. Kuhmonen, Tuomas, 2017. "Exposing the attractors of evolving complex adaptive systems by utilising futures images: Milestones of the food sustainability journey," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 214-225.
    13. Ruth Little & Damian Maye & Brian Ilbery, 2010. "Collective Purchase: Moving Local and Organic Foods beyond the Niche Market," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 42(8), pages 1797-1813, August.
    14. Estevan Coca, 2021. "Food Procurement in Post-neoliberal Countries: Examples from South America," Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South, vol. 10(2), pages 275-295, August.
    15. Giaime Berti & Catherine Mulligan, 2016. "Competitiveness of Small Farms and Innovative Food Supply Chains: The Role of Food Hubs in Creating Sustainable Regional and Local Food Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-31, July.
    16. Yaying Zhu & Juan Chen, 2022. "Small-Scale Farmers’ Preference Heterogeneity for Green Agriculture Policy Incentives Identified by Choice Experiment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-19, May.
    17. Alison Blay-Palmer & Guido Santini & Marielle Dubbeling & Henk Renting & Makiko Taguchi & Thierry Giordano, 2018. "Validating the City Region Food System Approach: Enacting Inclusive, Transformational City Region Food Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-23, May.
    18. Phil Mount, 2012. "Growing local food: scale and local food systems governance," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 29(1), pages 107-121, March.
    19. Stevens Azima & Patrick Mundler, 2022. "Does direct farm marketing fulfill its promises? analyzing job satisfaction among direct-market farmers in Canada," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(2), pages 791-807, June.
    20. Becot, Florence & Conner, David & Nelson, Abbie & Buckwalter, Erin & Erickson, Daniel, 2014. "Institutional Demand for Locally-Grown Food in Vermont: Marketing Implications for Producers and Distributors," Journal of Food Distribution Research, Food Distribution Research Society, vol. 45(2), pages 1-19, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agribusiness;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:iefi14:199369. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ilbonde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.