StuDiet: Shaping Students' Diets for Planetary Health

Partner: University of Göttingen (UGOE), University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück (HSO)

Project duration: 04/2026 - 03/2029

Funding: Zukunft Ernährung Niedersachsen (ZERN)

Methods: Analysing consumer behavior, design science research, big data analysis, and machine learning applied to quantitative and qualitative evidence

Summary:
Current diets are often unhealthy and environmentally harmful. Since individual approaches have limited impact, institutional settings like university canteens are a powerful lever that can reach many people at once. The transition into university is a particularly formative life stage.
The StuDiet project longitudinally examines first-year students' diets at two universities, combining surveys, canteen transaction data, and qualitative methods. The goal is to develop data-driven interventions such as nudges, menu redesigns, and policy recommendations, transferable to comparable institutions nationwide.

With our partners at UGOE and HSO, we aim to compile and co-create data-driven interventions for institutional caterers that can be scaled and transferred to similar institutions nationwide. In particular, this includes predictive models and a prototype recommender system for healthier choices.