The Healthy food choices for a sustainable future – Healthy Future project was a development project for the food service industry. The idea of the project was born of the need to develop the students’ professional skills of sustainable development.

The project improved awareness of healthy eating habits together with healthy food and climate focused choices. This meant working with vegetable-enhanced diet and networking between culinary vocational schools and colleges and working life in the fields of health, tourism & catering and environmental technologies in Finland, Croatia and Italy.

The focus was to develop sustainable development activities in the catering industry. This consists of a healthy diet that produces climate-friendly meals. The purpose was also to increase the use of vegetables to reduce carbon footprint. At the same time, we had an opportunity to increase students’ entrepreneurial skills and to develop international studies and competing activities.

The Healthy future project was co-funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus+ program. The project partners were Omnia and Ekami from Finland, Galileo.it from Italy and Centar za odgoj i obrazovanje Slava Raškaj Zagreb and Hotelijersko‐turistička i ugostiteljska škola Zadar from Croatia. Omnia was the coordinator of the project.

We have utilized and further developed outcomes obtained in the Healthy future project in the Erasmus+ KA3 project Cooking for the future, which was in effect from December 2018 until May 2021.

Photo 1. Online interview on the results and impact of Healthy Future project May 2021. From the top right  Kristine Nedergaard Larsen,  Claus NielsenHanna Arminen, Mika Heino  and Oona Haapakorpi.

Healthy future project was reviewed and then selected, together with 14 other projects, as being particularly interesting. These 15 have been chosen from a large pool (120) of projects because of the methods that were used, and the results achieved.

The interview focused on the concrete methods that were used and our assessment of the outcomes’ and results’ potential for wider use.

Photo 2. From the top right Oona Haapakorpi,  Kristine Nedergaard Larsen,Hanna Arminen,  Claus Nielsen  and Mika Heino .

There were two representatives from Omnia: Mr Mika Heino, Expert of International Activities, who was also responsible to make sure that the project met its objectives and Mrs Oona Haapakorpi, Lecturer in Food Production, who was in charge of the professional content. There was also one representative from Ekami: Mrs Henna Arminen, Lecturer in Food Production.

This online interview meeting was hosted by Danish Technological Institute as the conductor of the study. We were interview by Production and Innovation Consultant Kristine Nedergaard Larsen and her colleague Claus Nielsen from the Danish Technological Institute as part of a study of Erasmus+ projects focusing on sustainability commissioned by the European Commission. The online interview meeting took place on 26th May 2021.

Are you interested to know what have we done? Do you want more info?

Please visit our web site: http://www.healthyfutureproject.eu

The web site will remain open until 13th February 2024.

Text: Oona Haapakorpi, Omnia