KochCup Football as a communicative bridge for environmentally-friendly nutrition International football tournaments enjoy great social and media attention in Germany and across Europe, offering an opportunity to raise awareness on topics of societal interest beyond football. The 17th men’s UEFA Football Championship (EURO 2024) hosted by Germany was an event of great magnitude: one month, 24 teams, 10 cities, 70,000 fans in the final, and a multi-million audience in Europe and across the world. The KochCup project used the momentum and visibility of the European Championship 2024 to address the immediate need to shift toward healthier and more sustainable diets. The far-reaching effects of our diets and food production on the climate and biodiversity – through land, resource and water consumption – are a call on all relevant actors to take action and make environmentally-friendly food available and accessible to everyone. The EAT-Lancet Commission’s Planetary Health Diet provides a scientific basis for the necessary changes in the global food system and contains recommendations that can be used to ensure that everyone has access to healthy and sustainable food by 2050. To support raising awareness on as well as mainstreaming environmentally-friendly nutrition, the project organised a competition with German apprentice cooks and did several other awareness-raising events that ran in parallel with the European Championship 2024. As part of the project, young chefs presented their competing recipes during four preliminary rounds in September and November 2023 in regional contests in Kiel, Frankfurt, Gelsenkirchen and Halle (Saale). How tasty, healthy, and sustainable a recipe was, was decided by an interdisciplinary jury of food and environmental experts as well as professional chefs and sport scientists on the basis of sustainability and cooking techniques criteria. For example, recipes had to be as far as possible plant-based, organic, seasonal, regional, and produce no to as little as possible food waste. “Sustainability and resource-saving management play a major role in the hospitality industry, which is why they have also been given more space in our new training programs. In the KochCup project, the trainees had the chance to put their creative skills in the spotlight as part of the 2024 European Football Championship and thus stimulate guests’ and professionals’ appetites for innovative, delicious and sustainable food.”, noted Sandra Warden, Managing Director at the German Hotel and Restaurant Association (DEHOGA) and vocational training expert. The 12 healthiest, tastiest and most environmentally-friendly dishes qualified for the final. The three winning recipes reflected the philosophy of the competition on the plate. Lucie Fischer Chapalain won the first prize for her dish “From earth to plate”, followed by Leon Girrbach with the recipe “Pumpkin meets leek” (second place), and Jens Kleinfelder with the dish “Buckwheat falafel with hummus and kale salad” (third place). The three winners received a masterclass with star chef Stephan Hentschel to fine tune their recipes and advance their cooking techniques. “You can learn a lot through a competition like this as it is not only about how a recipe tastes or how you present it on a plate. Rather, it is about considering its impact on the planet and on our health.”, one participant shared. In addition to professional jury prizes, the KochCup Community had the chance to vote for their favourite KochCup recipe in an online voting process. Janis Keßler won the audience prize for his dish “From fields of the West Palatinate”. You can find a selection of KochCup recipes and additional information about the project on the project website. During the EURO 2024, the KochCup team promoted the KochCup cookbook in a number of events to spread the word about planet-friendly nutrition to broader audiences such as the “Deutscher Ernährungstag”, the 2000m2 Festival and the Volunteer Academy of the host city in Berlin. Commenting on the impact of KochCup, Anton Schmaus, who is a patron of the project and the main chef of the German Men’s National Football Team noted: “In my job, I experience every day how important a balanced, plant-based diet is. It is not only a basic prerequisite for a good sportive performance, but also for general well-being and, of course, for a climate-friendly lifestyle. Sustainable cooking should therefore be an essential part of cookery training and trainees should be motivated to develop creatively in this area and make healthy and resource-friendly nutrition tangible to people.” Throughout the entire competition phase, the CSCP and its project partner, tippingpoints made the content accessible to the broader public through integrating online voting, encouraging people to cook the recipes at home, sharing project results in real time on the project website and social media channels. Results and calls for action were featured on local and national media outlets. The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection.