To Örebro University

The serving of meals in professional contexts is a complex task. To succeed, the critical elements of planning and service should be carefully considered. Few, useful tools exist for designing and assessing dishes, meals, and menus. This article introduces the framework of gastronomic variables, developed over 20 years of pedagogical and didactical practices, as a qualitative tool in designing meals. The framework comprises seven gastronomic variables: taste and flavour, aroma, temperature, texture, colour, shape, quantity/volume. The framework helps students and professionals to focus on critical components in the design of dishes and is also useful for assessment in education.

In this chapter authors aim to discuss what a conscious meal represents today and how to broaden the use of the Conscious Meal Model in more disciplines and to new target groups. The chapter examines the use of the updated model in university-level education through a small-scale pilot study conducted on food service manager students. The pedagogical usability of this developed model and its use in the discipline of Culinary Arts and Meal Sciences in presented. The ethical viewpoints in the Conscious Meal Model are raised by applying the Rotating Workstation Method to activate the students when working wiht the model as a tool for highlighting challenges in meal planning.  Conclusively, the authors suggest that sustainable meal planning needs to be permeated by ethical perspecives. Furthermore, meal planning needs to be operationalised so that meal makers and students can understand how ethics and sustainabillity are linked to meal production in public and private settings.

Introduction: This pilot study investigated how food service management (FSM) students comprehend the need for a thorough understanding the importance of to whom the food is being prepared and in which context, but also how ethical and sustainable aspects can be emphasised in meal planning and production. The Conscious Meal Model (CMM) was used to support FSM students’ development as professionals. The model broadens the meal's perspective and considers the guest's wishes, needs, preferences and conditions regarding meal consumption, in private and public meal sectors (Magnusson Sporre, 2015). Meal planning should also be permeated by ethical perspectives, operationalized in a way so that the FSM students can see the connections between ethical viewpoints and requirements of sustainable meal production practice. For reaching this aim, the consciousness in meal planning and production, as depicted in the CMM model, has a key role.

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate how FSM students define criteria in meal planning and production according to the CMM.

Method & Design: The central standpoint for designing the learning task was to enable critical thinking and support experimental mind-set needed at the university level of studies. Students (n = 12) worked in four groups of three to define and motivate criteria in four food service areas: three public meal settings—schools, hospitals, and elderly care—and one private lunch canteen. Each context provided one workstation, which the groups visited independently and added ideas based on the previous groups’ ideas. The authors designed a rotating workstation method (RWM), inspired of the various team learning methods. The method includes exploring ideas and processes, discussing differences, and resolving them to co-construct new understanding (Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2017). The RWM-method provided data on four separate handwritten sheets, including 119 units of analysis, which were analysed with qualitative content analysis.

Results: The students noted the various power relations related to food choice and quality in hospitals, schools and elderly care as poor and in private canteen restaurants as high. Issues related to ethics and sustainable were challenging, yet different, in all four contexts. These issues remained abstract, showing how important it is to use models (e.g. the CMM) and to operationalise what ethical and sustainable meal production means in different food service practices.

Conclusion: Both the private and public sector meal planners must have solid education to be able to meet the contemporary demands and act wisely in the changing societal environment also in the future. The CMM helped students realise the complexities of food service. When the students use the CMM, they got a tool which provide them to work in a structured way, and they can problematize around different issues in the meal planning and production process. CMM and RWM have their potential as pedagogical tools not only in FSM education, but also in other areas of gastronomy and hospitality education. By supporting the students’ ability to apply and discuss theoretical concepts in their study programmes, they will be prepared to meet food service needs in contemporary times, and to be fit for the future.

References:

Lehmann-Willenbrock, N. (2017). Team learning: New insights through a temporal lens. Small Group Research, 48(2), 123–130.

Magnusson Sporre, C. (2015). Måltidsgörarens utmaningar: Komplexiteten i det medvetna måltidsgörandet (Örebro Studies in Culinary Arts and Meal Science, 11). Örebro: Örebro University.

In Sweden, free school lunch has been served for more than a hundred years, and it is now a democratic right of all elementary school children. The school meal has always been associated with different opinions and subject to much debate. The aim of the study is to explore school meal food and taste memories in a convenient sample of Swedish adults. A web-based survey was carried out in the summer of 2020. The 246 respondents attended school between the 1940s and the early 2000s. The material was collectively analyzed using NVivo 12 Pro (QSR International), resulting in two overarching themes. “The traditional school food heritage” theme consisted of accounts of traditional Swedish food through the ages and meanings attached to it. Memories were connected to likes and dislikes of certain foods and dishes. “The social school food heritage” theme consisted of accounts of coercion, control, and peer pressure, but also joy, friendship, and commensality. The Swedish school meal is a shared experience surrounded by strong feelings and memories regarding the food and the context. It means a lot both culturally and socially, acting as a carrier of a common food heritage.

In Sweden, school lunch has been served for more than a hundred years, but it was not until 1997 that it became a democratic right to all school children. Today, about 1.3 million hot school meals are served daily. Over the years, the school meal quality has been associated with different opinions and subject to much debate.

In the present study, we explored school meal food and taste memories in a web based survey with open questions, distributed in social media in the summer of 2020. The 246 respondents attended school between the 40s and the beginning of the 2000s and shared freely their views and experiences of the food and different tastes, but also of the atmosphere and feelings. A thematic qualitative analysis was carried out using NVivo 12 Pro, resulting in two overarching themes.

The traditional school food heritage theme consisted of accounts of traditional Swedish food through the ages and meanings attached to it. Positive, as well as negative memories were connected to likes and dislikes of certain foods and dishes. The social school food heritage theme tells us about coercion, control and peer pressure, but also about joy, friendship and togetherness. For some pupils, it was the only proper meal that they ate during the day.

The Swedish school meal is a shared experience surrounded by strong feelings and memories regarding the food and the context. The school meal means a lot both culturally and socially and acts as a carrier of a common food heritage.

Mattanterna, eller bambatanterna som de kallas i Göteborgsområdet, har startat sin arbetsdag tidigt för att förbereda dagens lunch. I de stora kokgrytorna tillagas skolmaten och doften breder ut sig i och runt om skolbyggnaden, för att sedan genom fläktsystemet leta sig in i klassrummet. Hungern väcks till liv om det är något man gillar. När det är dags att äta, skyndar vi genom långa korridorer med gula tegelväggar. Stå snällt på led och vänta på sin tur att få plocka till sig den orangea plastbrickan, besticken, tallriken och glaset. Mjölken tas ur ett gigantiskt tetrapack, ljummet vatten i rostfria kannor och ibland finns det juice. Allt ska ätas upp, "tänk på barnen i Afrika" är ett mantra under 70-talet. Ärtsoppan med de vita fläskbitarna körs runt i tallriken och döljs under en servett för att sedan kastas i smyg. Under bordet sitter det kletiga tuggummin. Ett glas mjölk och knäckemacka med smör och aromat blir räddningen de dagar man inte tycker om maten. (Ur författarnas minnen från 70-talets skoltid).

Lisa Haeger möter Cecilia Magnusson Sporre och Hillevi Prell och diskuterar skolmaten som ett viktigt svenskt kulturarv. Vad har älskats och hatats, vad är det som är så speciellt med svensk skolmat?

Public meals in schools, hospitals, social, and elderly care play an important role in Swedish welfare. This article analyzes texts concerning the public catering sector, following up government directives that meals should provide enjoyment. The aim was to study a discernible shift towards enjoyment in the approach to public meals. The method is qualitative, with data from functional texts related to the public meal sector in Sweden, using the Five Aspects Meal Model/FAMM as a qualitative framework used by dietitians to add soft values in the public catering sector to the average nutritional values. The result is described in terms of important meal situations: new values, hospitality and service, environment, experience, and food quality as related to how and in which way to make changes. The question of public meals is important in an international view with elderly and multicultural populations.

Redan 1990 skriver Marianne Ekström (Pipping) i sitt förord i avhandlingen Kost, klass och kön om betydelsen av att se på måltiden som en gemensam handling. Hon refererar till sociologen Georg Simmels (1993) betraktelsesätt att måltiden både kan vara en individuell handling och på samma gång en gemensam händelse. Marianne gör en liknelse mellan sin avhandling och processen att ställa till ett gästabud, ett arbete som är ett kollektivt projekt. Hon liknar även avhandlingsarbetet med en offentlig måltid och den komplexa produktionsprocess som ligger bakom. Nästan 25 år senare är dessa tankar om at tmåltiden är mer än bara maten vi äter fortfarande högst aktuella. Måltidsfrågor diskuteras flitigt i media och den offentliga måltidssektorn i Sverige är nu av intresse i debatten om hur man kan skapa positiva matupplevelser med gästen i fokus. Måltider som serveras i en offentlig kontext är en viktig del av det svenska välfärdssamhället och innefattar skola, vård och omsorg. Dessa måltider regleras av statliga styrdokument där kunskap och fakta om näringsriktig mat är väl etablerade och grundar sig på de nordiska näringsrekommendationerna, NNR (Livsmedelsverket, 2013). Idag finns det diskussioner om att bredda måltidens perspektiv och titta mer mot individuella önskemål och behov samt helheten i måltidskedjan, därmed ökar efterfrågan på nya redskap för måltidsplanering och hur man skapar tillfredsställande måltidsupplevelser i den offentliga måltidssektorn.