by Rebecca Walker — April 23, 2010—Health Care Without Harm and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, have released Balanced Menus: A Pilot Evaluation of Implementation in Four San Francisco Bay Area Hospitals. It is believed to be the first examination in the U.S. of the impact that reduced-meat menus in hospital food service have on climate change.
The report concludes that a pilot implementation of the Balanced Menus program across four participating hospitals yielded greenhouse gas emissions that exceeded the initial 20 percent reduction goal and substantial cost savings. The report is available online.
Since implementation of Balanced Menus in January 2009, the four pilot hospitals—Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital; the San Francisco VA Medical Center; the John Muir Health Medical Center; and one anonymous facility—have reduced meat offerings in their cafeterias and/or patient meal programs. These four San Francisco Bay Area hospitals have collectively reduced their meat purchasing by 28 percent and reduced the steep procurement costs associated with a high meat diet.
Encouraging a reduced and sustainable meat diet is part of a primary prevention agenda to reduce the nation’s skyrocketing rates of diet-related disease, including diabetes, obesity, and certain cancers. Shifting meat consumption patterns would also contribute to larger climate mitigation efforts; promote cleaner air and water; and help protect the effectiveness of antibiotics.
In addition to reducing meat as part of the Balanced Menus approach, hospitals around the country are working with Health Care Without Harm to sponsor farmers’ markets on hospital grounds and negotiate with suppliers for more locally produced foods and foods raised without pesticides, non-therapeutic antibiotics, growth hormones or genetic modification. Almost 300 hospitals have taken the HCWH Healthy Food in Healthcare Pledge, which is a commitment to a broad range of food-related sustainability practices, and allows hospitals to demonstrate their leadership in the larger marketplace to shift demand toward sustainable food procurement.
For more information, see the Web site of Health Care Without Harm.
