From Policy to Plate: Turning food policy into healthier, lower-carbon meals
Every year, schools, hospitals and other public institutions across the Canton de Vaud serve around four million meals.
What if those meals could improve people's health while reducing their environmental impact?
That is the opportunity behind From Policy to Plate, a new collaborative initiative supported by the Canton de Vaud and led by Swiss Food & Nutrition Valley, pi2Life and FOOD2050.
Over the next 18 months, the programme will work with collective catering providers across Vaud to demonstrate how healthier, lower-carbon menus can be implemented in real kitchens.
The ambition is simple: turn policy-level health and climate goals into practical changes on the plate.
A huge opportunity hiding in plain sight
Public and institutional catering has an enormous influence on what people eat.
Every day, kitchens in schools, hospitals, care settings and other public institutions make decisions about thousands of meals. Those decisions need to balance nutritional requirements, budgets, procurement, kitchen capabilities, customer preferences and increasingly, environmental targets.
That makes collective catering both a challenge and a powerful opportunity.
“Translating health and climate ambitions into meals that work for chefs, kitchens and the people they serve can be a huge challenge. From Policy to Plate allows us to use recipe intelligence in real catering environments, helping teams redesign menus, understand their impact and identify changes that can be scaled across public institutions.”
Christian Kramer, CEO & Co-founder, FOOD2050
Rather than asking individuals to change their diets one meal at a time, From Policy to Plate looks at the institutions serving food at scale.
If a kitchen can improve the health profile of its menus, reduce their carbon footprint and increase the use of locally sourced plant-based and alternative proteins, the impact can be multiplied across millions of meals.
From ambition to action
Translating policy ambitions into a menu that works in a real kitchen is rarely straightforward.
A policy might call for healthier diets or lower emissions. A chef still has to decide what goes on the menu. Ingredients need to be available, affordable and practical to prepare, and, importantly, people need to want to eat the result.
Policy to Plate is designed to bridge that gap.
The programme brings together public authorities, caterers, food suppliers, technology providers and innovators to test what works in practice, learn from implementation and identify approaches that can be scaled.
The programme is targeting:
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+15% improvement in the health profile of redesigned menus
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Significantly increase the share of local and Swiss products in menus
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-10% reduction in CO₂ emissions, as a minimum
“By making high-quality, locally relevant options easier to discover and source, we can help turn ambitious sustainability targets into practical purchasing decisions and create new opportunities for food innovators across Vaud and Switzerland.”
Dhanesh Kothari, Founder, pi2Life
Connecting innovation with real-world demand
A core part of the programme is connecting kitchens with the companies developing new food products and solutions.
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For food suppliers and brands, collective catering offers an opportunity to demonstrate how plant-based and alternative protein products can work in institutional settings.
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For solution providers, it offers a chance to test technologies and services against real-world challenges.
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And for caterers, it creates access to a wider ecosystem of products, expertise and ideas that can help them meet changing health and sustainability expectations.
Innovation needs to find its way into menus, procurement systems and kitchens, and ultimately onto people's plates.
“The opportunity is to move beyond setting ambitious targets and start testing what change actually looks like in the kitchens serving people every day. By bringing the right partners together, we can learn what works, build capability and create models that can be replicated.”
Marco La Fortezza, Head of Funding Strategies and Initiatives at Swiss Food Nutrition Valley
Now, we need the food ecosystem
The first phase of From Policy to Plate is now getting underway, and the programme is looking to expand its network of participants and partners.
We are particularly interested in hearing from:
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Collective caterers and kitchen operators interested in piloting the approach
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Food suppliers and brands looking to showcase their plant-based and alternative protein products
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Solution and service providers with technologies, expertise or services that can help accelerate the transition