Interventions to Strengthen Environmental Sustainability of School Food Systems: Narrative Scoping Review

Grace Gardner, Wendy Burton (), Maddie Sinclair and Maria Bryant
Additional contact information
Grace Gardner: Public Health Department, Newcastle City Council, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8QH, UK
Wendy Burton: Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK
Maddie Sinclair: School of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Maria Bryant: Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 11, 1-17

Abstract: School food systems play a role in the wider food system, but there is a scarcity of literature exploring interventions that aim to improve the environmental sustainability of school food systems. The present review aimed to understand and describe the types of interventions that have previously been explored to strengthen the sustainability of school food systems along with their impact. We applied a scoping review methodology guided by Arksey and O’Malley, which included a review of the online database Scopus and the grey literature. Information relating to intervention design, study population, evaluation method and impact were extracted. In total, 6016 records were screened for eligibility, 24 of which were eligible for inclusion. The most common types of interventions were school lunch menus designed to be more sustainable; school food waste reduction; sustainable food system education using school gardens; and dietary interventions with added environmental components. This review highlights a range of interventions which could positively influence the environmental sustainability of school food systems. Further research is needed to explore the effectiveness of such interventions.

Keywords: school food system; sustainability; planetary health; population health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/11/5916/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/11/5916/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:11:p:5916-:d:1153230

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().