Sustaintable Cooking for the Planet Project

SUSCOP – project number: 2018-1-NL01-ka202-038884

The world’s population will grow up to 10 billion people till the year 2100. This means sustainability problems associated to food production. We will need more energy, water and land and the resources are limited apart of the environmental cost – we need Sustaintable Cooking for the Planet.

In the Erasmus+ funded Sustaintable Cooking for the Planet (Suscop) project teachers of European cooking VET schools get a better understanding of the reasons why eating habits should change and giving students tools to make attractive dishes with animal source foods, like insects or vegetal, of course, which offers plenty of fiber and minerals but little of cholesterol.

The reason for this project is obvious: food production is a significant contributor to the climate change. The total amounts of water in order to get animal proteins is really high and totally inefficient. Anyway meat consumption has increased in recent years. And now, according to the IPCC 2018 report, the clinical change is inevitable, we hardly have time to react.

Reasonable But Also Challenging

The current laws of the different European countries do not fully reflect the possibilities related to insects, add to this that in each country the provisions are different.

Basic principles of available insects in food production:

• Farmed
• Have died naturally should not be used as food
• No part may be removed
• Feed: plant based products, gelatine, milk and egg products

Potential risks in general:

• Microbiological risks
• Chemical risks – little is known
• Allergens – current knowledge insufficient
• (Finally – we do not know if all insects are edible or not.)

Challenges in exploiting insects as human food:

There is some controversy and difficulties in the use of insects as proteins. One of the big challenges is neophobia. People feel disgust, there are cultural barriers also when eating insects. Studies have been conducted regarding the willingness we have to consume them or not, these being the results:

• One out of five meat consumers claims to be ready to adopt insects
• Males are 2.17 times more likely than females to adopt insects
• Consumers who plan to reduce meat intake are 4.51 times more likely to adopt insects
• It seems Norther Europeans are more adoptable to eat insects than Southern Europeans.

The Next Step

The theoretical foundation of the teaching and training of sustainable cooking module was laid in June 2019 in Bilbao, Spain. The goals of the project are to raise awareness about the impact of our eating habits on the environment and to train future cooks to work with alternative proteins.

The next step of the project will be a meeting in ROC Landstede in Harderwijk, The Netherlands. Here we will be working mainly in the kitchen, cooking the recipes we think that are healthy, environmental friendly and TASTY.

Sustaintable Cooking for the Planet Project – Further Information

Johanna Mäesalu, Head of International Affairs
johanna.maesalu (at) perho.fi

Andre Schoonhoven, Coordinator, SUSCOP Project
aschoonhoven (at) davinci.nl

The project partners in  Erasmus+ Cooking for the Planet: ROC Landstede, The Netherlands – Haaga Helia ammattikorkeakoulu, Finland – Ikaslan, Spain – Perho Liiketalousopisto, Finland – EntoCube, Finland – Da Vinci College, The Netherlands – Bridgwater & Taunton College, United Kingdom