Sustainable Menu Guide: The Future of Menu Creation for Food Managers

Project Overview

Read and download the final Guide to Sustainable Menus here.

This project aims to create a simple guide to facilitate sustainable menu design in health care. The work is based on the reality that health care’s food choices have significant environmental, social, and economic impacts, and that these should be designed to be positive. Whether thinking about climate change or increasing the social benefit created by a menu, food service managers (and menu-planners in general) across the country encounter the same complex decision-making when it comes to discerning what foods to choose to sustainably meet patient needs. This guide aims to simplify the process. The work is guided by the criteria that in order to be sustainable in health care, sustainable food choices should maintain or increase patient satisfaction and should meet budgetary constraints.

The project team went through an extensive research and writing phase to establish the structure of the guide. They explored trade-offs between offering simple, single first steps and representing the complexity of the decision-space around sustainable food choices. Chapters were organized based on food categories, starting with protein, which was deemed the highest impact area for menus. The guide emphasizes a switch from red-meat centre-plate to more based protein options like legumes, which was reinforced by both the new Canada’s Food Guide and the EAT-Lancet report. It also provides tools in addition to information, to help menu planners get to action. With funding and support from the Quebec government, the team will be launching an interactive website in Fall 2019 to make the tool broadly available.

Read the final deck below.

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PROJECT UPDATES

Featured

Sep 4, 2018

Research presented at Transforming Food Systems for the Health of People and the Planet Symposium

Sep 4, 2018

Beatrice Dagenais, the Masters Student who is working with the Sustainable Menus collaborative project, presented her research project at the Transforming Food Systems for the Health of People and the Planet Symposium at the University of Montreal on August 22. She's done two test interviews and has the next ones scheduled. Apart from the fact that a couple of facilities have turned down her interview requests because she is not associated to their researchers, things are progressing very well!

Sep 4, 2018

Jul 24, 2018

Sustainable Menus: July 2018 Update

Jul 24, 2018

The sustainable menus team has been working hard to make the adoption of sustainable practice accessible to the food service industry in healthcare facilities.

Drafting of the Sustainable Menu Guide is well underway. Using the most current research across the agriculture, health, and social sciences, each chapter of the guide assesses and ranks food in terms of sustainability. The information is presented in a manner most useful to those in the food service industry, with tools to assess current menu sustainability and tips to integrate sustainable ingredients into practice. Thus far, proteins and starches have been completed, while vegetables, desserts, and beverages are underway. The guide connects with the work of other collaborative projects, such as values-based procurement and indigenous foodways. Research is being supported by Allison Gacad, a Loran Scholar at the University of British Columbia.

In addition, the team is working with Béatrice Dagenais, Master’s student, and Geneviève Mercille, assistant professor, at Université de Montreal. Their research, carried out in partnership with Nourish, is examining the feasibility of sustainable menu practices in healthcare food services. Through qualitative research with food service managers in Quebec healthcare facilities, this project will allow for a better understanding of different perceptions of sustainable menu practices in various contexts.

Jul 24, 2018

TEAM

Annie Marquez, CIUSSS

Kathy Berger, Health Sciences North (HSN)

Josée Lavoie, CHU de St-Justine

Travis Durham, Grove Park Home

Cheryl Cooke, Interior Health

Charlotte Pilat Burns, Saskatoon Health Region

Anne Gignac, CHU de Québec-Université Laval

Elaine Addison, Horizon Health Network

Susan Taylor, Nova Scotia Health Authority

ADVISORS

Carole St-Pierre
Linda Varangu
Hayley Lapalme
Beth Hunter
Jennifer Reynolds