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3.18 The company exclusively uses environmentally sustainable hand cleaners in the bathrooms of customers and employees.
3.19 The team has already undergone environmental training (energy efficiency and water efficiency).
3.20 The team has already undergone environmental training (fundamentals of sustainability).
3.21 The staff has undergone some training on healthy eating and the health impact of what they are producing.
3.22 The company has a strategy regarding donations or support to its community.
3.23 The company donates to food banks or charities to avoid wasting food from products suitable for consumption.
3.24 The company has initiatives to promote healthy eating education for the local community (schools, colleges, community groups).
3.25 The company has a policy in place with the supplier or purchase specification that favors the acquisition of local products for foods such as dairy products, meat, fruits, and vegetables.
3.26 Does the company purchase one or more products from a charitable foundation or a social enterprise that provides social impact? (For example, a product made from leftover food, bread from a social enterprise bakery, etc.).
Additionally, the organization of three sections with a closed number of items will facilitate the construction of a score and classification of food services as sustainable services or not.
It is also important to highlight that the instrument is practical, quick to apply, not extensive, and encompasses the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic, and social). This instrument can help professionals working in food services to use and apply sustainability indicators, helping them to create strategies to change behaviors towards the environment.
2.5 P
RINCIPLES,
FRAMEWORKS,
AND STRATEGIES TO CREATE HEALTHY AND39
3. Responsible production and consumption practices (SDG 1)
The transnational chain and non-chain restaurants and foodservice industry sectors are important food system actors who feed millions of customers daily. These sectors offer a variety of inexpensive and convenient meals either consumed by customers on the premises, through takeaway, or delivered at home. In many countries, restaurant, food service and hospitality businesses are partnering with delivery service businesses. Through this new partnership, restaurants have the potential to influence upstream and midstream procurement practices and downstream eating and environmental stewardship behaviours of the population to support healthy and sustainable food systems.
The fair food, Good Food, Slow Food, and Sustainable Food Movements have evolved over decades, in response to concerns about the harmful impacts of the fast-food culture and large-scale food and agricultural systems on the diet quality and health of populations [40] . These movements have advocated for food to be healthy, green, humane, fair, and equitable, affordable, and profitable. They:
• Have supported local food cultures and traditions.
• Raised awareness about how food is grown and processed.
• Educated citizens about how their choices support either sustainable or unsustainable food systems practices
The restaurant, foodservice, hospitality and health care industries have many frameworks, guidelines, standards, and metrics to promote a healthy and sustainable food system then.
Figure 5 – Principles of healthy, sustainable menus [65]
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Restaurant businesses could also use MMCA (marketing mix and choice architecture) strategies to cue healthy and sustainable behaviours. Choice architecture or nudges represent how options are framed or presented to individuals in environments, deemed effective based on the assumption that:
1. People choose options that require the least amount of mental or physical effort.
2. People value immediate rewards or avoid short-term costs versus long-term benefits or consequences or specific actions.
3. People align their behaviour with prevailing social norms.
4. People identify with peer groups that reinforce specific lifestyle behaviours [41]
An MMCA framework is available to enable restaurants to promote healthy food environments that offer eight strategies, aligned with expert bodies’ recommended targets and actions, to encourage healthy food environments (Figure…). These strategies include:
• Place (ambience and atmospherics)
• Profile (nutrient composition),
• Portion (serving size)
• Pricing (strategic and proportionate),
• Healthy default picks (side dishes and beverages)
• Priming or prompting (information and labelling),
• Proximity (strategic positioning) (Kraak et., 2017)
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Figure 6 - Marketing mix choice architecture strategies to promote healthy restaurant environments. [42]
These voluntary strategies complement government-mandated standards, legislation, regulation and laws that require restaurants to meet food safety guidelines, food labelling requirements, nutrient composition targets, and responsible food and beverage marketing practices that influence the decisions of children, teens and their parents.
Starting in May 2018, the US menu labelling law required that calorie labelling be accompanied by contextual information to help Americans to make healthy choices when eating out at chain restaurants. The information states for children: 1200.1400 calories/day is used for general nutrition advice for ages 4-8 years and 1400-2000 calories/day for ages 9-13 years, but calories needs vary.
For adults: 2000 calories/day is used for general nutrition advice, but calorie needs vary. Upon a customer’s request, restaurants must provide written nutrition information for total calories, fat, saturated fat, trans-fats, sodium, protein, carbohydrates, added sugars and fibres [43].
Transforming restaurant business practices to support healthy and sustainable food systems.
People’s views of environmentally friendly business practices to produce “green restaurants” differ across countries. US consumers who visit green restaurants report that they value fresh ingredients, health, easy access, and environmentally sustainable food choices [44]. However, according to Jilcott Pitts, the US restaurants and food service industries have encountered barriers to expanding healthy and sustainable meals that include: low customer demand for, satisfaction with, and acceptance of
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new options; a limited selection of products from upstream vendors; and increased time, cost, and workforce training to prepare and serve items that may not be financially sustainable.
The US National Restaurant Association (NRA)2 has identified several sustainable practice trends for food systems, such as increasing water efficiency; promoting recyclable, edile and biodegradable packaging and reducing food production loss and consumer food and waste.
Managing food waste is important to save money for businesses while also reducing GHG emissions to mitigate the adverse effect of climate change. Chain and non-chain restaurant businesses can contribute to food waste reduction through various policies and strategies, such as:
• Providing customers with smaller plates in self-serve or buffet settings;
• Promoting trayless dining and eliminating “all you can eat” promotions;
• Replacing plastic food packaging containers with recyclable containers and edible wrapping;
• Tracking food waste practices to inform changes;
• Using diverted food waste in menus to reduce costs;
• Supporting institutional composing (NRA, 2018; ReFED, 2018)