The project SUSTAINMEALS adopts an integrated approach to promote a large-scale, nationwide shift towards healthier and more sustainable plant-based meals, focusing both on individual consumer-level variables and shared context-based variables. It builds on the disciplinary backgrounds and previous findings of the research team that has been working on complementary approaches to the study of meat consumption/substitution and plant-based diets, behavioral change interventions in health-related topics and eating habits, and research on food policy and consumption practices with a focus on sustainability and dietary shifts. In two phases, which comprise five tasks, the project will develop a methodological framework to map barriers and facilitators of transition, and an intervention design tool to bolster service capability as well as consumer choice, acceptance, and positive appraisal of plant-based meals. SUSTAINMEALS will not only expand knowledge on how to encourage consumers and empower providers in large scale catering/meal-contexts to shift to healthier and more sustainable plant-based meals, but also design and test an evidence-based toolkit which translates this knowledge into practice.

Drawing on a stage theory of behavior change and utilizing participants from three different countries in two continents, the purpose of this research is to provide evidence on which messages are most effective in promoting transitions to a plant-based diet.

The Centre for Psychological Research and Social Intervention in ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, is one of the partners in "Inherit", an international project that was awarded in August 6 million euros of European funds Horizon 2020 to study good practices to simultaneously defend health and the environment. The consortium is led by the non-governmental Belgian organization EuroHealthNet and has the scientific coordination of University College London, where Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology and the public health is a worldwide reference in the field of health inequalities. The project is coordinated in CIS-IUL by the researcher Sibila Marques and Prof. Maria Luisa Lima and researchers Cristina Godinho and Sylvia Luis are part of the team.It is a four-year project that will study European experiences that promote the health of communities and at the same time are environmentally sustainable. The Re-Food movement, launched in the Lisbon area, and social gardens that bloom throughout Portugal are some of the most interesting cases considered to be studied and replicated in other countries.