Culinary Education for Sustainable Development in Germany—The Example of Sous Vide Cooking

Within modern culinary education, education for sustainable development is essential for vocational students. Using the example of sous vide, its suitability for addressing sustainability in culinary education was investigated as well as to which extent it is currently implemented in Germany. Therefore, literature on potential environmental, social, economic and health impacts of sous vide cooking was reviewed and its current implementation in German culinary educational materials was analyzed. The analysis revealed a number of sustainability aspects of sous vide. Despite being covered in textbooks, it is not brought into a sustainability context. Moreover, existing sustaina-bility concepts for the gastronomy sector neither identify environmental conditions as a basic requirement for any socio-economic activity nor illustrate interdependencies and trade-offs between different sustainability dimensions. Hence, currently in Ger-many available sustainability concepts and culinary teaching and training materials do not support the development of a systemic understanding and multi-dimensional engagement when training future chefs.