Unhealthy diets are a leading cause of mortality, and lead to significant health care costs and lost productivity for individuals, communities, and society. Governments have committed to end all forms of malnutrition, including obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases, such as hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer. A range of recommendations are available to guide governments to act on this commitment, including to ensure healthy foods in public settings.
Governments worldwide have a unique opportunity – and responsibility – to lead by example: every day, governments purchase food that is served or sold in public settings, such as schools, nursing homes, health care facilities, government offices, community centers, and prisons. A healthy public food procurement and service policy provides governments with a means to ensure these foods contribute to healthy diets. In addition to the documented public health benefits, these policies can have economic benefits, improve productivity and educational attainment, help increase availability of healthy, affordable foods and boost local agriculture.
“Establish food or nutrient-based standards to make healthy diets
and safe drinking water accessible in public facilities such as
hospitals, childcare facilities, workplaces, universities, schools,
food and catering services, government offices and prisons.”– Recommendation 16, Framework for Action
Second International Conference on Nutrition
As a part of promoting healthy diets in Budhanilkantha Municipality, the new healthy public food procurement and services policies has been introduced to the municipal citizens, says Kumar Prasad Dahal, chief of Public Health Division at Public health office.
A public food procurement and service policy sets rules for the service and sale of food in public settings and/or the food purchased or subsidized by the government.
A healthy public food procurement and service policy establishes nutrition criteria which encourage food that promotes healthy diets and/or limit or prohibit food that contributes to unhealthy diets. The criteria can be nutrient- or food-based, or specify the preparation, portion size or service of food, and often they are a combination of all these types of criteria.
This policy dialogue on promoting healthy diets has been successful because of key personnel including Dr Archana Shrestha, Project Lead Associate Professor of Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences, Program Coordinator Nabin Adhikari, Program Coordinator Namuna Shrestha and Research Asssist Priza Pardhananga.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Nutrient Profile Models provide nutrient-based criteria for food categories to be covered by a regulation on food marketing to children. These, together with the WHO factsheet on Healthy Diet, could be a starting point for developing nutrient-based criteria for healthy public food procurement policies. Good starting points for food-based criteria could be national food-based dietary guidelines or the WHO 5 keys to a healthy diet.
The exact make-up of a diversified, balanced and healthy diet will vary depending on individual characteristics (e.g., age, gender, lifestyle and degree of physical activity), cultural context, locally available foods and dietary customs. However, the core principles of healthy diets remain the same and include the following:
-
LIMIT
the intake of free sugars
-
LIMIT
sodium consumption and ensure that salt is iodized
-
SHIFT
fat consumption away from saturated fats to unsaturated fats and eliminate industrially produced trans fats
-
INCREASE
consumption of whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and pulses
-
ENSURE
the availability of free, safe drinking water
Refer to WHO on Action framework for developing and implementing public food procurement and service policies for a healthy diet
