WeValueFood is a grand challenge project funded by EIT Food that seeks to address the growing erosion of society’s engagement with the food that it consumes. Novel approaches will be used to engage, educate and empower the next generation with respect to food, focusing on specific areas within Europe where food engagement is poor. Fit for purpose food education and engagement tools will be provided for the youth of today. A large pan-European cohort of passionate, proactive media savvy, and knowledgeable “food champions” will be produced. New participative training programs will be designed for industry and other stakeholders on how best to co-create learning on food values. In the long term, the project aims to create a society of people who are knowledgeable, passionate and engaged with food so that they are empowered to make the improved choices about the food they eat.

WeValueFood focuses on 5 areas of knowledge:

1. Food and health
2. Food and the environment
3. The origin of food
4. Food waste
5. Food production

• Created the first cohort of Food Champions who are food and media savvy and share their food values among their peers via social media and other communication mechanisms.
• Collected and reviewed over 350 food based education tools and strategies across Europe including the UK, Italy, Finland, Israel, Poland, Spain and Iceland.
• Collated these food-based education tools into a decision support tool called DECIFood to help support educators in selecting the more appropriate tools or resource. Access DECIFood here
• Engaged various stakeholders including NGCs themselves, industry and educators to determine the food-based learning needs of the next generation.
• Involved food industry via workshops to help them better understand how to engage the next generation of consumers.
• Modified and piloted food engagement/education tools in different regions throughout Europe.
• Created new tools and strategies for educating students at different education levels.

The project is funded by EIT Food with the consortium made of 12 different partners from research, academia and non-profits across Europe. Organization participating in WeValueFood are: Queen’s University Belfast (UK), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), EUFIC (Belgium), Matis (Iceland), University of Cambridge (UK), University of Reading (UK), University of Helsinki (Finland), University of Turin (Italy), University of Warsaw (Poland), IMDEA Food Institute (Spain), Basque Culinary Centre (Basque Country) and Rikotlo (Belgium).