BIPS Institute Seminar: School catering as a fair food environment: challenges in cost management

At the BIPS Institute Seminar on May 28, 2025, the focus was on how mass catering can contribute to creating a fair food environment. The presentation examined in particular the challenges of cost management in daycare and school catering in Germany.

The starting point was the concept of a “fair food environment”, defined as one that ensures equitable access to nutritious and healthy food for all children, regardless of socio-economic background. Daycare centres and schools were highlighted as key settings, as they reach large numbers of children and therefore represent structurally important points of intervention for prevention.

The presentation provided an overview of the specific structural conditions of daycare and school catering in Germany. It addressed tensions between the aim of offering healthy and sustainable meals and the reality of limited budgets. Survey results were cited to illustrate the challenges faced by school authorities, including the need to balance nutritional quality with affordability and social acceptance of meal prices.

A further focus was placed on cost-related questions. The talk discussed the extent to which school authorities subsidise school meals and what costs are associated with health-promoting catering. Cost calculation models were presented as tools to support decision-making by enabling a more efficient allocation of resources while maintaining nutritional value.

The speaker was M. Ernestine Tecklenburg, substitute professor at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and postdoctoral researcher in the GENAU project at the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS.