Co-creating innovative and accepted legume-based dishes for school canteens with adolescents in a low socioeconomic area

The promotion of sustainable diets, that valorise and give stage to plant-based foods, is beneficial for both human and environmental health. Adolescence is crucial to support healthy and sustainable eating. Despite this, adolescents remain an understudied group, especially those from lower economic status and immigrant background. This study aimed at developing innovative, sustainable and healthy legume-based (LB) dishes for school canteens through co-creation with adolescents in a low socioeconomic status area with high immigration rate. Nineteen adolescents and four chefs participated in iterative sessions of focus group discussions using a combination of methods (Jobs-To-Be-Done, free association tasks, Substitute-Combine-Adapt-Modify-Purpose-Eliminate-Rearrange technique) to identify ideas of new LB dishes. Subsequently, 92 adolescents rated 28 dish concepts based on these ideas on their willingness-to-try them. Six concepts were selected and translated into prototypes that underwent further evaluation by 140 adolescents who assessed their liking, sensory and emotional responses. Results showed that all dishes were well-received, with lower acceptance among high-neophobic adolescents, yet none of the selected dishes were rejected. Exploring individual differences in liking identified two clusters with different hedonic patterns. Emotional characterization of dishes showed those that elicit positive emotional responses high in arousal and novelty in all adolescents, independently from FN, increasing their likelihood of acceptance. The study shows that co-creation with adolescents in combination with understanding individual differences, are promising strategies to develop innovative, healthy and well-received LB dishes for school canteens.

KOKKOROU Margarita;  SPINELLI Sara;  DINNELLA Caterina;  PIERGUIDI Lapo;  WOLLGAST Jan;  MARAGKOUDAKIS Petros-Achillefs;  MONTELEONE Erminio; 

2024-10-21

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC137062

0950-3293 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950329324002453?via%3Dihub#s0170,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC137062,   

10.1016/j.foodqual.2024.105343 (online),