Reimagining the Food System

Join us co-creating a healthy, sustainable, and accessible food system! 

Register here

Background

The adoption of the Planetary Health Diet within the Dutch context has increasingly driven a structural realignment of national and municipal nutrition guidelines to reflect the unavoidable dependencies between human health and ecological boundaries. Recent Dutch dietary guidelines translate these global frameworks locally by explicitly shifting recommendations toward predominantly plant-forward consumption patterns, emphasizing regional legumes, whole grains, and seasonal vegetables while curbing resource-intensive animal protein intake to reduce carbon and land-use footprints. However, the announcement of the dietary guidelines brought a backlash from communities and farmers. This transition highlights the critical linkages between human health, food systems, environmental resilience, and social protection: true primary prevention requires a food environment that makes sustainable nutrition physically available and economically viable for all. We aim at establishing access to healthy and sustainable food as a basic human right. 

By involving all stakeholders including those who are opposing, and embedding these standards into localized social protection infrastructures like the b.ASIC a.CTIVIST k.ITCHEN and Being Well Kitchen, sustainable and healthy food ceases to be an exclusive lifestyle commodity and is reframed as a universal public service. This protective scaffolding systematically provide vulnerable urban populations with alternatives for food sources dense with ultra-processed options, thereby utilizing community food initiatives as a powerful tool to simultaneously alleviate health inequalities, lower healthcare burdens, and restore regional ecosystem vitality.

About the program and food concept

Transforming Utrecht's urban food landscape requires moving from fragmented, project-based initiatives toward a coherent, prevention-oriented infrastructure. The following strategic plan outlines a 3-part community dinner (VOKU) and interactive co-creation workshop series designed by the Being Well Catalysts' Wellbeing Kitchen initiative in partnership with the b.ASIC a.CTIVIST k.ITCHEN .

This series advocates a newly proposed Community Food Preventive Infrastructure (CFPI) framework alongside the plant-forward principles of the EAT-Lancet Commission and recent Dutch nutrition guidelines to finalize a healthy, sustainable, and affordable food system model for Utrecht.

The rationale for the Community Food Preventive Infrastructure (CFPI) stems from a persistent implementation gap between Utrecht's progressive political ambitions regarding public health and the highly unstable, disconnected reality in which grassroots food initiatives operate. While community kitchens generate substantial public, cultural, and environmental value, they are constrained by localized asymmetries, precarious funding, and complex regulatory compliance. Rather than treating food as a private market commodity, the CFPI provides a conceptual lens to reframe community-led systems as stable components of a prevention-oriented public infrastructure.

The primary aim of the CFPI is to serve as an intermediate governance framework that officially recognizes, coordinates, and supports the value produced by bottom-up initiatives. It acts as a distributed interface connecting municipal departments, local agroecological producers, healthcare providers, and community projects around shared long-term objectives. Operationally, the model strives to stabilize resource flows through mechanisms like a hybrid Food Health Fund, secure accessible physical spaces, streamline food safety compliance, and embed social prescribing networks into the neighbourhood infrastructure. By establishing these enabling conditions, the CFPI seeks to overcome individual behaviour-change limits, systematically bridging public health prevention, social inclusion, and resilient urban food system transformation.

Short BIO organizer:

-         Mahdi Abdelwahab: Founder of Being Well Catalysts, Planetary Health expert, and Health System Innovator.

Series Overview

• Dates: 15 October, 12 November, and 3 December 2026

• Times: Workshops start at 4PM, Dinner starts at 6PM.

• Target Attendance: max 25 people per workshop session, participants can join one or more workshop. The dinner will have space for 40 people. It is an open walk in dinner.

• Meal Style: 100% vegetarian buffet aligned with Planetary Health Diet standards (high in local legumes, whole grains, seasonal vegetables, and reduced waste).

• Location: BAK Basecamp, Pauwstraat 13A, 3512 TG Utrecht.

• Cost: Pre-registration is needed (to plan for the workshop and make sure to reduce food waste); Dinner is an open walk in, no registeration is needed, first come first serve. If you are already attending the workshop of the day, your place is reserved. Suggested donation of 5-10 Euros (Not required; no one turned away for lack of funds).

• Overall Timeline: 4PM-9PM (Workshops: 4PM-6PM; VOKU Buffet: 6PM-8:30PM).

Session 1: Mapping the Foundation & Navigating Asymmetries

Date: Thu Oct 15, 2026

• Planetary Health Menu Focus: Autumn abundance featuring Dutch root vegetables, whole grains (spelt/barley), and local organic legumes to introduce low-environmental-impact nutrition.

• Interactive Co-Creation Workshop (4:00PM-6:00PM):

  • Objective: Deconstruct the implementation gap between Utrecht's progressive health ambitions (e.g., Beleidsnota Gezondheid 2024-2027) and the grassroots reality.

  • Activity: Stakeholder Power-Interest Matrix live mapping. Participants will work in mixed groups (citizens, local producers, and advocates) to identify how to empower grassroots initiatives that traditionally have high interest but low systemic power.

• VOKU Buffet (6:00PM-8:30PM): Community dining used intentionally as a space for social connection and informal narrative gathering regarding everyday eating barriers in Utrecht.

• Synthesis & Action Steps (online survey and report to be prepared and shared with participants for feedback before the next workshop): Consolidating community feedback on how the VOKUs and Being Well Kitchen can act as a non-clinical territorial extension of public health, connecting sustainability with health and affordability as a practical example of the Community Food Preventive Infrastructure (CFPI).

Session 2: Circular Flows, Local Logistics & Operational Barriers

Date: Thu Nov 12, 2026

• Planetary Health Menu Focus: A 100% circular, reduced-waste vegetarian buffet utilizing seasonal crops, and surplus organic ingredients rescued in collaboration with local food recovery networks.

• Interactive Co-Creation Workshop (4:00PM-6:00PM):

  • Objective: Address the fragmentation of local supply chains and navigate rigid institutional rules like HACCP compliance for hybrid social spaces.

  • Activity: Logistics & Compliance Hackathon. Designing a shared operational support model. Participants will co-create practical workflows for combining small-scale organic farmer logistics with community kitchen distribution.

• VOKU Buffet (6:00PM-8:30PM): Dinner conversations focused on food literacy, sharing practical tips for transitioning away from standard supermarket dependence toward regional food networks.

• Synthesis & Action Steps (online survey and report to be prepared and shared with participants for feedback before the next workshop): Finalizing the structural components of the intermediary platform establishing the Being Well Kitchen or similar platforms from the mapped partners and initiatives as a core regional nodes for circular resource valorisation.

Session 3: Institutional Embedding & The Food Health Fund

Date: Thu Dec 3, 2026

• Planetary Health Menu Focus: Hearty winter fermentation and preservation buffet, highlighting fermented local vegetables, protein-rich legume stews, and ancient grains, demonstrating sustainable eating during low-yield months, with adapted recipes inspired by Dutch and other countries traditions.

• Interactive Co-Creation Workshop (4:00PM-6:00PM):

  • Objective: Finalize the funding and governance architecture of the suggested CFPI framework for Utrecht.

  • Activity: Co-designing a hybrid enterprise/cooperative model that secures financial resilience, strict redistributive mechanisms must be explicitly detailed to ensure vulnerable groups are never priced out of sustainable nutrition.

  • Activity: Co-designing the parameters of a hybrid Food Health Fund. Participants will outline how municipal resources, social finance, and differentiated community contributions can co-exist to ensure long-term affordability without relying on temporary subsidies.

• VOKU Buffet & Social Infrastructure (6:00PM-8:30PM): Celebration buffet showcasing the finalized, multi-layered food system model to invited neighbourhood stakeholders and institutional allies.

• Synthesis & Action Steps (online survey and report to be prepared and shared with participants for feedback before the next workshop): Formalizing the strategic language and pilot metrics of the CFPI model to prepare Being Well Catalysts for roundtable discussion with broader stakeholders and policy dialogues with the Municipality of Utrecht.