The vision of FEAST is crystal clear: transitioning the way Europe eats!
To realize this vision, the FEAST consortium has identified a core mechanism, i.e., Living Labs. Our living labs are spread across five different European food regions, including Central European group, Southern European group, Eastern European group, Anglosaxon group, and Scandinavian group. These regions cover rural areas, small and medium-sized cities, and associated large cities, including London, Stockholm, Kaunas, Berlin and Bologna, that represents Europe’s five food typology regions, covering aspects, such as regional diets, food production systems, and welfare system. Each living lab is focused on working with and empowering key players responsible for shaping food environments including the production, distribution, and retail sides as well as municipal, provincial, and national authorities.
The living labs offer user-focused experimental environment in which municipalities, end-users (citizens) and stakeholders will be supported to co-create innovative solutions in the real-world settings. These solutions could be utilized further by the policy makers to communicate to with different actors across the food chain (i.e., producers, food industry) to increase the acceptability of food and health policy.
The living labs will promote co-creation and leverage the participation of end-users (citizens, including vulnerable groups) by gathering their real-world insights and local knowledge. Through a community problem-solving approach, living labs are particularly well-suited for identifying, defining, and addressing the needs of vulnerable groups struggling economically and geographically to access solutions to support them to adopt and maintain healthier and more sustainable diets.
