The federal school food program across the United States for decades has been known to serve students with subpar unhealthy meals to 30 million students who receive free or reduced meals due to low budgets, rolled-back standards, and to have ingredients with longer shelf lives. As a result of such barriers these schools have had to prepare frozen or highly processed foods to youth. The meals are usually high in sodium, sugar and fats with very little nutritional value. Many behavioral and medical issues can be directly connected to the food a person consumes.
Project Context
Schools who participate in the federal food program in the USA don’t have access to fresh, safe, and nutrient rich foods to feed youth.
Problem Statement
People who are public school cafeteria staff who have worked in the school system for 1 year or more.
Audience
I have chosen to create an application that connects school culinary staff to locally produced produce. To improve the overall food quality given to youth, the schools would use the application to help find fresh, safe, and nutrient rich foods to feed the youth locally instead of highly processed “foods” from a far. The schools would choose to use my application to bring better quality food to youth, remove the middle man (USDA & FDA) and lowering their yearly produce cost while simultaneously improving the overall health of the students.
Innovative Solution
Design Principles
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The health of all natural systems must be considered and protected at every stage of the design process.
Nature-centered Design
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Consider the positive and negative interactions between all components of the design and the process. Intentionally maintain all beneficial interactions and eliminate all negative outputs.
Whole System Design
I utilized the whole system design approach prior to designing the mid-fidelity prototype. I accomplished this by learning and reviewing the components of a U.S food system and U.S based school food system. The system has cafeteria staff, school staff, students, supplier, politics, federal funding, dietary restrictions, lunch times, storage, kitchen setup, training, federal requirements etc. I chose to focus on the food supplier component of the system and how to better connect schools with local suppliers because in my research of school food system in the U.S. I learned that most if not all of the food purchased is processed food which is unhealthy for the youth and finically cost more than purchasing fresh produce.
Whole System Design
The end-of-life cycle use for food waste created from the produce sourced from the application would be collected from the schools and returned to the farmers to create compost.
Closed Loop Design
As a tool, the application supports the staff and school’s to source local sustainably farmed produce from local farmers who are practicing various sustainable farming practices such a regenerative farming. Sustainable farming works in harmony with the natural world by building soil health, using biodiversity and creating zero waste like in nature. When the application is utilized correctly the farmers and school will have established a relationship that can minimize food waste, Co2 emission and food inequalities on a local level.
Nature-centered Design
Intentionally design products with the end-of-life cycle in mind to be 100% reusable.
1
Closed Loop Design
Current food system Map
I’ve created a hi-fi prototype seamlessly navigates staff through the application starting with login or registration to a farmer facing page where staff could search local farms 20+ miles away with option for deliver or pick-up. My goal is to create a fully interactive application that any school public or private could use to improve their food program.