Building pdo and pgi awareness among high school students in order to improve their diet

Resumen

An OSMOSIS project (collaborative project among University and High School) was carried out by Universidad Miguel Hernández of Elche (UMH) and consisted in building and implementing innovative knowledge for Secondary Education (Horizon 2014-Schools and Horizon 2015-K12). This project involved teachers and students from the Scientific Culture Course of the High School Jaime de Sant Ángel (Redovan, Alicante, Spain) and the AgroFood technology Department of UMH. The topic of this work was Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) awareness and its relation to a healthier diet among students. European food and drink reflect the continent cultural diversity and rich lands. EU geographical indication schemes protect specific know-how, authenticity and agro-environmental conditions. Geographical indications include protected geographical indications (PGIs) and protected designation of origins (PDOs). These schemes protect the name of a product that comes from a specific region and follows a particular traditional production process. For PDOs, the raw ingredients need to come from the region of origin where all steps of production need to take place. As for PGIs, at least one of the stages of production, processing or preparation takes place in the region. The project was designed for 15-18 years, old students. The project combined knowledge from food quality, geography, economics, biology, mathematics, and language. The activity was organized in 6 blocks of activities: 1) working plan design by the University and High School teams; 2) presentation of the working plan to students; 3) initial questionnaire to students based in order to know their degree of knowledge about PDO and PGI; 4) lectures and visits to Protected Designation of Origen producers; 5) final questionnaire to students with the same content as the initial one; and, 6) data processing, correction, and revision by students in order to evaluate their achievements. One of the evaluations of the students’ awareness of the importance of eating locally and seasonally produced food. Afterward, the students developed a service-learning project based on the achieved knowledge. The project assessed the untrained students’ knowledge versus themselves (trained students). This project is presented as an example of an interdisciplinary collaborative project among the University, Food Industry, and High School.