Photo Nina Slagmolen for Food100 Two Wageningen PhD candidates have gained places in the FOOD100 list for 2024. This is a list of the current 100 top Dutch ‘food change leaders’.
Half of the list is reserved for experienced people in the food industry and half for up-and-coming professionals, with an upper age limit of 35. PhD candidates Joline Wierda and Lisanne Geboers (both in the Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles chair group) are listed among the 50 ‘inspiring and talented up-and-coming professionals’ who are ‘bringing innovation and sustainability’ to the Dutch food system, ‘making it healthier and more socially responsible’, according to the FOOD100 jury.
Network
The list mainly consists of individuals who have founded and run healthy initiatives, including a large number of CEOs, and it aims to serve as a network for current and previous winners. ‘It is really special for us as researchers to be included in the list’, says Geboers. ‘The work that entrepreneurs do to change the food system is much more visible. For me as a researcher, our work sometimes seems less visible, even though it is also focused on actual practice. Our inclusion in the list is an opportunity to highlight the work we do.’
Wierda is also pleased with her spot on the list: ‘It includes all kinds of interesting initiatives for improving the food system. I’m sure it will be really nice and inspiring to meet the people behind those initiatives.’
Food Heroes
Wierda and Geboers are working on PhD projects on ‘a healthy and sustainable food environment’, as part of the Food Valley Regional Deal. Wierda studies this issue in hospitals and care institutions while Geboers looks at it from the perspective of work in small and medium-sized enterprises and while travelling. Both take the same approach of obtaining a picture of the current food environment and then looking, together with stakeholders, at what is needed to change that environment and make it healthier and more sustainable.
The current list of food change leaders was drawn up by the nine jury members. They assessed over 350 submissions, looking at ‘driving force, innovativeness, sustainability and the extent to which the nominee shares knowledge and insights.’ On 22 November, there will be a network lunch at which six of the winners will be declared Food Heroes of 2024. Wierda and Geboers are in with a chance of this accolade.
