TABLE 3.
Participant-recommended best practices for hospitals implementing five primary healthy and sustainable food service practices.
| Sustainable food service practice | Best practices | Example quotes |
|---|---|---|
| Increasing plant-based dishes | Modify familiar dishes and make them plant based (n = 8) Accommodate your demographics (i.e., marketing strategies, taste tests) (n = 6) Increased offering of vegetarian options (n = 6) Blending plant and meat proteins, offering seafood, altering portion sizes of proteins versus veggies (n = 5) Advertise support for local businesses to patients (n = 1) Work with prime vendor A representative (n = 1) Hiring a chef (n =1) Plant-based focus nutrition education for patients (n = 1) |
‘I definitely, I think that’s a big component to just any menu building is taking your demographics... as we try to implement more plant-based recipes. that’s where that marketing kind of like naming comes into play so that. I can still appease, you know, a Vietnam-era veteran, meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, but serve him a vegetarian shepherd's pie and not, you know, completely destroy, like, perception of what a meal should be’. Pt 13 |
| Procuring and serving sustainable foods that meet organic, ecological, fair trade or other ethical certifications | Choose products that are easily available and/or reasonably priced (n = 4) Work with prime vendor A (n = 4) Work with other veteran affairs (VA) hospitals to coordinate what products are chosen to ensure that they are prioritised and stocked (n = 1) |
‘Like I was mentioning earlier, like, it tends to be something that I will periodically print off to see what they have available. And when we have our weekly menu meetings, maybe once a quarter or twice a year, I'll bring in the list and just say, Here's what they've got right now. Does it make sense to incorporate any of this?’ Pt 02 |
| Procuring and serving locally/regionally produced foods | Begin with the least-expensive or highest-quality product to purchase locally (n = 4) Communicating importance of local food purchasing to staff/leadership (n = 2) Community outreach and assistance with contracting (n = 1) Work with vendors and VA contracting to help set up the contracts (n = 1) Having a garden and gardener on site (n =1) |
‘And I had asked them if they, some of the ones that are the easier to, like, kind of look in that, you purchase a lot are like milk, you know, we use tons of milk. If that’s purchased locally. that’s a big amount that we can automatically say this is purchase locally... I think that’s why I we, we do well, but we have a lot of room to grow, but I guess if you're comparing us to other facilities, that don’t have a garden, maybe this a little higher. I don’t know’. Pt 11 |
| Reducing food waste | Food tracking/plate waste studies to prevent overproduction (n = 6) Monitoring/rotating product to use leftovers and/or use products before they expire as per safety guidelines (n = 5) Food donation programme (n = 5) Equipment to reduce carbon footprint of waste (pulper, biodigester, oil recycle and/or compost) (n = 3) Starting small, finding the ‘low-hanging fruit’ (n = 3) Improve quality/acceptance of menu (n = 3) Room service style meals where patient selects their meal, results in less waste (n = 3) Finding someone to spearhead efforts and having regular team meetings (n = 3) |
‘Now that we have, um, Computrition, we can actually see, like, hey, we need to prepare this number of chicken, this number of fish. So we're not overproducing. ... I know that’s a huge driver for those food service chiefs is to decrease waste, increase patient satisfaction, and a lot of them are doing this inventory connect. So it tracks inventory, so they're not over purchasing’. Pt 05 |
| Reducing energy consumption and/or reducing non-food waste | Practices to use less plastic/Styrofoam (reducing use of straws, biodegradable disposables, etc.) (n = 6) Replace old equipment with energy-saving options (automatic lights, etc.) (n = 6) Studies to support practices (e.g., infection control and plate waste) (n = 2) Communicate to leadership budget justification of energy-saving efforts (n = 2) Training staff on energy-saving strategies (n = 1) Make the switch when the budget allows (n = 1) Implement recycling programme (n = 1) |
‘We made a decision to not put straws on all trays. it’s by suggestion of the dietician or a practitioner. Or at... resident request.... We have moved to a more biodegradable to-go container. We don’t use a lot of them, but, you know, ones that we do are biodegradable. um, plastic silverware ... we try not to use it. We used to use it very freely and now we're just more considerate of that’. Pt 06 |