Further action
Ask your Royal College and professional society to endorse our open letter
Dear (name of CEO/President/Chair person)
I am writing to request that the (Royal College/Professional society) consider endorsing this open letter on hospital food.
Plants First Healthcare is a campaign run by a coalition of NHS health professionals who are increasingly concerned about the impacts of the food system on climate change and biodiversity loss. They are committed to urgently taking action to minimise these harms through evidence-based strategies that will benefit individual, population and planetary health. As part of the action plan an open letter will be sent to NHS leaders. The letter calls for the NHS and other healthcare organisations to adopt a plant-based by default menu, which has already been successfully implemented in 11 hospitals in New York City. In these hospitals, more than 50% of patients stick with the plant-based meal, there is >90% satisfaction from patients, food emissions have dropped 36% and it is also cheaper. A win-win-win scenario.
Please consider signing the letter as an individual and also share with your members. If you are able to sign as an organisation then please email your logo to info@pbhp.uk.
Your sincerely,
How to start talking about food in your hospital
Although the various steps are numbered, they do not need to happen in this order and some may happen at the same time.
Identify key stakeholders in your hospital:
- Lead dietitian or head of nutrition and dietetics
- Catering dietitian or nutritionist.
If your hospital has an external food provider then they will be employed by that organisation.
If your hospital has in-house catering, then it will likely be a dietitian who is part of the trust’s dietetic department
If your hospital uses an external caterer, then there will be an operations manager that works at the hospital for the company Catering manager for your staff restaurants
Read your hospital’s Green Plan and strategy documents to understand what commitments have already been made with regards to food provision.
Make contact with your sustainability lead (usually an executive board member like the Chief Financial Officer) and team members. Your hospital will also have a clinical sustainability lead and green champions.
Step 4
Set up a meeting to discuss patient and staff menus
Share useful resources
Offer to give a presentation such as a Grand Round presentation or at a departmental education session.
Invite a member of the Greener by Default team to give a webinar
Run plant-based campaigns in the hospital such as Veganuary and No Meat May, both of which have workplace challenges and provide a number of useful resources. Ask the staff restaurant to promote and incentivise plant-based meals.
There is now overwhelming evidence that shifting towards a plant-predominant food system can significantly improve national health outcomes, address health inequalities and is essential for meeting our climate and nature targets. There is growing evidence that it could also decrease NHS costs.
