Opportunities for and Limits to Cooperation between School and Families in Sustainable Public Food Procurement

This paper describes a research project, carried out in an Italian public school, to assesswhether parents were willing to take part in food procurement decisions, as well as their ability toaccurately predict what foods children would pick at school lunch and their propensity to supportsustainable food choices made by the school. The methodology included a questionnaire, issued to500 parents, and an in-depth study of 138 child/parent pairs. The study comprised: (i) presentationof an innovative recipe in the weekly menu of the school canteen; (ii) meal observations of children'sintake at school lunch during the week of the menu modification; (iii) collection of both parents'and children's reports on their choices of recipes from the modified weekly menu. The resultsare commented in light of two important changes that have recently affected Italian public schoolfood procurement: the opening of school canteens to lunches brought from home and the measuresadopted since 2020 to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Both events go in the direction of delegatingto parents the multifaceted role of the school in the food arena. The article concludes that the resultsof the study should discourage this approach.