Opportunities for and Limits to Cooperation between School and Families in Sustainable Public Food Procurement

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is focused on the opportunities for and limits to cooperation between school and families in sustainable public food procurement, as experimented in a school of the Northern Italy. It is an interesting study, considering the new limitations due to the COVID-19 and the necessity to follow the indications of the UN Agenda 2030 in term of sustainable food systems.

Some parts are well structured; others request to be improved before the publication.

Major details are reported in the file pdf.

Here, some general suggestions.

1. Abstract: it should be a total of about 200 words maximum. Yours is composed of 206 words. Please, revise it.
2. Introduction: Please, highlight clearly the novelty of your research starting from the literature gap in this field. I suggest separating the sub-sections 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 from the introduction for creating a new section: 2. Background and Literature review. Other details are reported in the attached reviewed file to improve this part.
3. Materials and Methods: According to the guide for authors “They should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited”. In this case, I suggest moving some parts of the results into this section, specifically, the models ‘description used for the multiple regression.
4. Results: You said that 500 parents answered the questionnaire, but 138 child/parent pairs participated in the experiment. Please, clarify better this passage as reported into the abstract. Why this selection? Additionally, I suggest moving to the Material and Methods section some parts where the description of the models (equations) is reported.
5. Discussions: According to the guide for authors “Conclusions: This section is not mandatory, but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex”. In this case, in my opinion, the discussion is too much long. Please, revise it and extrapolate the Conclusions

Some references to add:

1. Lombardi M., Costantino M., 2020, A Social Innovation Model for Reducing Food Waste: The Case Study of an Italian Non-Profit Organization, Adm. Sci. 2020, 10, 45; doi:10.3390/admsci10030045.
2. F.J. Swensson, Florence Tartanac, 2020, Public food procurement for sustainable diets and food systems: The role of the regulatory framework, Global Food Security, 25, June 2020, 100366.
3. Rosalia Filippini, IvanDe Noni, Stefano Corsi, Roberto Spigarolo, Stefano, Bocchi, 2018, Sustainable school food procurement: What factors do affect the introduction and the increase of organic food? Food Policy, 76, April 2018, 109-119.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please, see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I recommended to Sustainability to publish this paper

Author Response

Thank you for your revision and your positive comment.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors detailedly narrate the Italian system of public school lunches, including the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, they report results from a study assessing pupils’ and parents’ opinion and behavior around school lunches. They use data from 500 questionnaires to evaluate parent’s readiness to serve on the school canteen committee, and parents’ readiness to pay as increased prize for a more sustainable school lunch recipe. Furthermore, the authors conduct an experiment using 138 pupil-parent pairs were they evaluate congruence between children’s liking of a menu and parent’s prediction. Moreover, the authors derive predictors of parent’s choice to eliminate a recipe from school lunch. The authors conclude that the responsibility for school lunches should not be transferred to the parents, but remain with the school, with increased engagement from the parents.

The paper is definitely interesting and provides much information about the Italian school lunch system, with translational potential. However, I have major concerns about the presentation of the information, the statistical evaluation and the interpretation of the data.

• In general, the paper is too long. It is unclear if the reported original data are the main focus of the manuscript (as could be expected form the abstract), or if the narrative review of the Italian system is the main focus of the manuscript (as the manuscript is currently written). The Introduction narrating the general importance of school lunches as well as paragraphs 1.1 and 1.2 should be massively shortened, as well as the Discussion.
• The language needs to be toned down in several places. Example: Introduction, line 91 and 92: Please make it clear if this the authors’ claim or the reference’s claim. Introduction, line 102: The authors have just given several references where the topic was analyzed, so how can they state there is “little or no attention”? Or Discussion, line 464: There is no “proving” in the conducted study, and the claim seems a bit far-fetched, given that there a many potential reasons why parents would not choose to eliminate recipes from the school menu. Also lines 469 “negative attitude” and line 497 “not reliable” are too strong of a word choice.
• The outline of the paper is quite confusing to the reader. As already stated above, the introductory paragraphs are far too long. Moreover, much of what belongs to the Materials and Methods Section is presented in the Results section, for example the description of the regression models, the definition of covariables, or how the Likert Scale was transformed into numeric values. This needs to be corrected.
• Materials and Methods are described insufficiently.
  • It is unclear when the study took place (I assume before COVID lockdowns, but this is not stated).
  • How big was the school under investigation, i.e. what percentage do the 500 questionnaires represent?
  • Are the 138 parent-pupil pairs also a part of the 500 questionnaires? How were they selected?
  • Which statistical software was used for the calculations?
  • Please give precise definitions of all variables used.
• Related to the last point above: How was the outcome “elimination_choice” defined and what is the interpretation of the beta coefficients? It looks like this is a yes/no answer, i.e. a binary outcome. Linear regression is unsuitable for this kind of outcome, a logistic regression model is needed.
• Could the authors give an explanation why their transformation of Likert Scales into numerical values and theirs distances is valid?
• Why is there no adjustment for socioeconomic status? As the authors state themselves, this is an important factor influencing diet and food choice.
• First line of the discussion (line 425, 426): How exactly can this conclusion be drawn from the data? Same for line 477.

Author Response

Please, see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you to the authors for providing a revised version of their manuscript. I feel the manuscript has much improved. The statistical model still needs to be re-worked, but this is feasible.

Regarding the model: A binary outcome needs a logistic regression model. The explanatory variables stay the same. For STATA syntax, see here

https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/stata/dae/logistic-regression/

The estimates that need to be reported are Odds Ratios (not beta coefficients, like in a linear regression), which indicate the change in probability to eliminate a recipe. Example: if the Odds Ratio for “children age” is 2.1, then the probability of the parents to eliminate a recipe is increased 2.1-fold for every year the child gets older.

The model needs to be re-run and the tables and the numbers in the text updated.

Author Response

Please, see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have appropriately re-worked their statistical methods. I have no further comments.