Balanced Menus

A Sustainable Approach

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Balanced Menus is a systematic approach to reduce the amount of meat protein in hospital food and a strategic pathway to serving the healthiest, most sustainably produced meat available.

Through the Balanced Menus Challenge, we are asking participating hospitals to commit to a 20% reduction in meat and poultry purchases over 12 months. Balanced Menus offers cost savings as well as concrete public and environmental health benefits.

Most hospitals buy substantial amounts of meat, typically through large distributors who source from the U.S. commodity beef, pork and poultry markets. However, there is a significant cost associated with meat and poultry produced and distributed via our industrialized system including antibiotic resistance, arsenic, and hormones which further contaminate animal manure, polluting our air and water.

At the same time, U.S. food production relies heavily on fossil fuels, and red meat production has a particularly large climate footprint. Reducing meat purchasing at health care facilities is a potent food service climate change reduction strategy as well as an opportunity for hospitals to model healthy eating patterns for patients, staff and visitors.

Americans eat more than twice the global average of beef, poultry, pork and other meat and hospital food service operations often mirror this trend. Reducing the overall amount of meat served in hospital facilities provides health, social and environmental benefits that are consistent with prevention-based medical practices.

Hospitals can demonstrate leadership to the marketplace by reducing the overall quantity of meat and poultry served and through preferential purchasing of sustainably produced meats deliver an important preventive health message to patients, staff and their community.

I want to take the Balanced Menus Challenge.