Research projects helps Stockholm meet sustainable food goals
At the AIMday Sustainable Consumption conference, organised by the Stockholm Trio University Alliance in December 2025, researchers and City of Stockholm staff met to discuss concrete challenges in the city’s work on sustainable consumption. After the conference, researchers at Karolinska Institutet, KTH and Stockholm University received funding to continue working together with the City of Stockholm. The projects have contributed to the efforts to achieve sustainable consumption.
For researchers, the funding made it possible to test ideas, collect data and develop new research questions. For the City of Stockholm, the projects have provided new knowledge to support its work towards its sustainable consumption goals.
“Small research projects can be very valuable when they are clearly linked to an identified need for knowledge that can help us move forward. In those cases, there is often scope to translate new knowledge directly into working methods or measures and have a clear impact on the organisation’s work”, says Annika Jacobson, Special Coordinator for Climate action at the City of Stockholm.
Five projects received grants of SEK 50 000. Three of them addressed different parts of Stockholm’s food system: school meals, local food production and food advertising.
Mapping supports efforts to reduce the climate impact of school meals
In their work to reduce the climate impact of school meals, the City of Stockholm wanted to gain a better understanding of how staff and parents view plant-based meals.
"It is easy to assume that there is “general resistance”, but is that really the case? That is what we wanted to find out, says Annika Jacobson, Special Coordinator for Climate action at the City of Stockholm.
Fabian Lenhard, researcher at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, received funding to examine barriers and success factors for more plant-based food in Stockholm schools. One important starting point was how parents view such a change, and the results were surprising.
"We found that a clear majority of the almost 2 000 parents who took part in the study were very positive about schools actively working towards more sustainable food. That was a somewhat unexpected finding", says Fabian Lenhard.
The study also highlighted what can help schools succeed with their change efforts. Among the 449 school staff who took part, the importance of shared goals, participation and regular follow-up stood out in particular.
"The fact that school staff have shared goals and a spirit of “we are doing this together” proved to be very important for how well schools succeeded in implementing new food concepts and bringing pupils and parents on board", says Fabian Lenhard.
There has also been strong interest in the results outside Stockholm, including from other municipalities. Fabian Lenhard appreciated the opportunity to conduct research on a current issue that affects many people.
"For me as a researcher, it is important to be able to contribute to solving concrete societal issues. AIMday and the funding from Stockholm Trio made it possible to move from the city’s broad reflections and questions to a detailed mapping that can now be used in the city’s continued work. I think we need to work more in this way in the future", says Fabian Lenhard.