PhD project: Influencing Sustainable Food Consumption through the use of Sustainable Procurement Criteria

Population growth and urbanization has led to an increase in resource intensive and energy rich foods; posing many challenges to meet the nexus of environmental, socio-economic and health problems and putting pressure to change production methods, governance and consumption of food [1-3].  This will require implementing measures across the food value chain, in order to realize a transition to a sustainable food system. One such measure is the use of public procurement to influence the purchases of food from the public sector, which accounts for a large share of food consumption. However, there are many challenges to implement procurement criteria in the public sector to guide purchases, calling for an increased understanding of the criteria employed.