Danone names winners of the sustainable food systems initiative

Danone Institute North America, a not-for-profit established by Danone North America, announced the four winning teams of the One Planet. One Health. Initiative—a new grant program in which transdisciplinary teams from across the United States and Canada were challenged to design, implement, and evaluate actionable community-based projects for sustainable food systems. As winners of the inaugural One Planet. One Health. Initiative, the four teams will each receive $20,000 in grant funds to further design and execute their projects.

The winners and projects are:

• University of Guelph (Canada) – Food Waste Reduction in Families: This project tests the feasibility, acceptability, and impact of a four-week food waste reduction intervention on household food waste and fruit and vegetable intake. This pilot intervention provides 30 families with children with a Food Waste Reduction Toolkit that includes practical tips for parents and children on meal planning, food shopping, and storage, along with recipes that showcase strategies to use up foods before they spoil.
• City of Minneapolis, Tamales y Bicicletas, Appetite for Change, and University of Minnesota – Perennial Health Project: This project aims to support climate change mitigation and food sovereignty by increasing year-round, energy-efficient food production in food-insecure neighborhoods through passive solar greenhouses. The two passive solar greenhouses will use the sun’s light and heat energy as the primary energy source. The project will collaboratively plan, build, and analyze energy use, cost, production of fresh produce, benefit, and community education from the greenhouses, with the goal of expanding hyper-local food production capability, providing training opportunities for youth leaders, and providing direct access to fresh produce on a year-round basis in a cold climate and urban setting.
• Project New Village, San Diego State University, and the University of California, San Diego – Bringing Gardening into the Good Food District: This project aims to expand the Good Food District (GFD) vision by reconnecting residential gardeners and farmers from the Greater Southeastern San Diego—most of whom are low-income people of color—to the broader discourses and practices of regenerative urban agriculture. The overarching goal is to assess the feasibility and benefits of creating and sustaining a community of practice for residential food growers and farmers contributing hyper-local food to the GFD.
• Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University – Assessing the Global Warming Potential and Nutrition Profile of Local Foods in Boston Public Schools: This pilot study facilitates transdisciplinary collaboration among schools, farmers, manufacturers, and nutrition researchers to assess the potential nutritional and environmental benefits of including local options on school menus. Researchers will evaluate the nutritional density and global warming potential of the current Boston Public Schools (BPS) lunch menu items and will work with local farmers and manufacturers to find alternate products that maintain the nutritional quality of the meals served while reducing their global warming potential.

In addition to the $20,000 in grants each winning team was awarded, Project New Village received an additional $10,000 prize for presenting the best communication plan for their project.

Press release