How do Vocational Students Think About Plant-Based Food?

Research project

Start date 01 January 2024

What are the eating-habits of vocational students, and what are their views on plant-based foods? In this project, the food-choices of vocational students between the ages of 16 and 20 will be analyzed. How much does sustainability factor into their decisions? How could we stimulate them to make more sustainable and healthier choices? The project focuses on plant-based food because this has both positive effects on the environment as well as the health of target audience.

There are a lot of initiatives out there that try to make young people eat healthier. Often, these are school programs that focus on what children eat at school. At home, parents are often the biggest influence when it comes to eating-habits – but what happens when these adolescents move out and start making their first independent decisions about what they eat? How do they handle the temptations on the way to school, after their work-outs, or during a night out?

In this project, seven universities and eight vocational schools work together, as well as the Voedingscentrum and JOGG. HAS Green Academy is the coordinator of this project.

This project focuses on multiple questions. Each work package consists out of a set of questions around eating habits of vocational students and designing interventions that stimulate healthy and sustainable eating patterns.

Work package 1

Which food choice behaviours are vocational students showing and why?
Which barriers and drivers are there when it comes to plant-based food?
In which subtypes can vocational students be categorised based on their healthy and sustainable food choices?

Work package 2

Do vocational students recognise their own food choice behaviour and do they wish to change it?
Which interventions do vocational students design in co-creation to stimulate plant-based food choice behaviour?
Which interventions are seen as the most impactful and scalable on Dutch vocational schools when it comes to stimulating healthy and sustainable food among students?

Work package 3

How can those involved, including researchers, optimally connect to share new insights?
How can we communicate our new findings to the outside world in an impactful manner?
How can we utilise the results from this project for external, long term impact and upscaling in the Netherlands?

The project aims to provide more insight into the choices that vocational students make about food, their openness to plant-based nutrition, and how healthy and sustainable choices can be stimulated. The interim and end results will be presented by researchers and involved students at different symposia. New knowledge will be applied in the impact phase. Results will be used to inform partner initiatives like the ‘Voedingscentrum’ and commercial parties such as catering-businesses, school cafeterias, food-producers and restaurants and hotels.

New insights from this project will be shared with the world so that new knowledge can be applied by municipalities, organisations that focus on stimulating healthy and sustainable food, and commercial parties in the food-industry. By collaborating with students on the messaging, more impact will be realised among this group. Furthermore, this knowledge can be utilised to form a base for other research projects focusing on plant-based food and healthy and sustainable food choices among students, or the development of products that closely adhere to the wishes of the target audience.

Vocational students will be directly involved in this research project. Because of this, the connection between research and society is strengthened. Furthermore, through the collaboration with organisations such as Voedingscentrum, results will lead to concrete points-of-action that will have great impact in the long term.

Work package 1

Which food choice behaviours are vocational students showing and why?
Which barriers and drivers are there when it comes to plant-based food?
In which subtypes can vocational students be categorised based on their healthy and sustainable food choices?

Work package 2

Do vocational students recognise their own food choice behaviour and do they wish to change it?
Which interventions do vocational students design in co-creation to stimulate plant-based food choice behaviour?
Which interventions are seen as the most impactful and scalable on Dutch vocational schools when it comes to stimulating healthy and sustainable food among students?

Work package 3

How can those involved, including researchers, optimally connect to share new insights?
How can we communicate our new findings to the outside world in an impactful manner?
How can we utilise the results from this project for external, long term impact and upscaling in the Netherlands?