The Dietary Guidelines for Americans provides evidence-based nutrition information and advice for people age 2 and older and serve as the basis for Federal food and nutrition programs.

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This Fact Sheet outlines 10 key reasons to adopt procurement policy to increase healthier options at public facilities.

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This Fact Sheet provides examples of state and local policies to create food and nutrition guidelines for municipally or county-owned or operated food vendors and contractors.

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This Fact Sheet geared towards businesses, provides talking points and guidance on why serving healthier options is good for businesses and can attract customers.

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This guide shows how state and local governments can adopt healthier “procurement” (purchasing) policies to help improve public health, lower overall costs, and provide leadership.

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Curious what common packaged snack items and beverages meet the U.S. Dietary Guidelines? The Alliance for a Healthier Generation Product Navigator allows vendors to identify snack products for concession stands and vending machines that meet most healthy food service guidelines.

Use the product navigator

In August 2010, the Chicago Parks District executed a 5-year contract with a national vendor that called for park vending machines to meet nutrition standards. Released in the Journal Preventing Chronic Disease, a study evaluating the healthy vending found that patrons and staff reported liking the healthier offerings and that monthly sales grew over time. The authors suggest that the findings of this evaluation “can inform efforts in other municipalities to improve the nutritional value of snacks offered in park vending machines.”

Community Case Study:Working With Community Partners to Implement and Evaluate the Chicago Park District’s 100% Healthier Snack Vending Initiative

A first-of-its-kind national study of 853 vending machines on 260 state and local public properties found that the machines were stocked primarily with unhealthy food and beverage options such as soda, candy, chips, cookies, snack cakes, and other sweet baked goods. The study, released recently by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), examined vending machines in agency buildings, state university and community college buildings, recreation facilities, city and town halls, courthouses, highway rest stops, and other public spaces. Fifty-eight percent of beverages sold were soda or other sugar-sweetened beverages, and only 42 percent were healthier options such as water (16 percent), low-calorie beverages (23 percent), and 100 percent juice (3 percent).

Click here to access the full report.

This guide and sample model healthy municipal and county vending agreements provide model contract language to help municipalities, counties and nutrition advocates improve the food environment for people working for, visiting, and being served by local government agencies.

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This guide provides practical guidance to states and localities when developing, adopting, implementing, and evaluating a food procurement policy.

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As a supplement to Improving the Food Environment Through Nutrition Standards: A Guide for Government Procurement, this document provides potential answers to questions employees and constituents may ask as healthy and sustainable food procurement policies are implemented.

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A healthy beverage vending contract gives a school district, city, town or county the opportunity to control the array of products sold while generating much-needed revenue from the agreement. This fact sheet outlines key considerations, including what to look for when soliciting a vendor, best practices to ensure a sound agreement, and ways for community members to get involved in the process.

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Rural communities face physical, geographic, social and economic barriers to good health. High obesity rates in rural areas point to the need for healthier eating and drinking habits. Establishing policies that decrease the amount of sugary drinks sold in vending machines in public spaces can help to increase consumption of healthier drinks and encourage healthier drinking habits in rural communities.

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This DNPAO Healthy Beverage Networking Call provided an overview on:
1. How food service guidelines can be used to align institutional food and beverage service with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and best sustainability practices.
2. How local governments can implement guidelines and standards in a variety of settings to support offering healthier beverage choices sold and served to populations.
3. How to include supportive strategies to encourage consumers to select healthier beverage options and sustain efforts beyond project investments.

This Networking Call was held July 9, 2013; 2:00- 3:00pm Eastern. To listen to a digital recording of this call, dial the USA toll-free telephone number 866-491-8825. Access the announcement for this call.

Creating healthy food service policies and programs are promising strategies to improving health through the food environment. Many local, state and federal entities are beginning to create healthy food environments in line with the current 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans by introducing practices to assist employees and residents in making informed, healthy food and beverage choices when faced with so many options.

This document is intended to provide an introductory framework to guide federal, state and municipal agencies as well as private sector institutions in identifying, planning and implementing healthy food service programs and policies.

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Interested in transforming local vending machines to help people reach their healthy eating goals? Community Commons has gathered a wide variety of resources and strategies to improve vending machines from organizations such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest and ChangeLab Solutions.

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Healthier vending machine initiatives increase consumer choice by expanding access to healthier snack and drink options for consumers. The purpose of this document is to describe actions taken, key considerations and lessons learned by state health departments already implementing healthy vending machine initiatives in buildings owned or operated by the state. In addition, it provides examples and links to resources, tools and guidance related to healthy vending machine initiatives. This document is for state public health practitioners and others seeking to increase healthy options in state agency vending machines.

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State and local governments are seeking to enhance their procurement policies to improve the nutritional content of food they purchase and to purchase more food locally. One way to do so is to give competitive bidding preferences to government procurements of agricultural products or food that is produced in the local community. This analysis looks at possible legal restrictions on the ability of states and local governments to give preferences to local producers of food.

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The National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity’s brand new Healthy Meeting Toolkit is a guide to creating a culture of health and wellness in meetings, conferences, and workplaces. It contains tips on how to serve healthier foods, work with hotels to contract for a healthier conference, talk to a caterer or chef about serving healthier options, integrate physical activity into meetings, and much more.

This vending snack list shows a list of healthier snack products that meet the HHS/GSA guidelines and could be of use when working with vending companies to identify what packaged snack products meet your healthy vending criteria.

Guidelines for Federal Concessions and Vending Operations

Healthy Vendor Toolkit 

Many localities improving the food choices offered in their workplaces have used pre-implementation surveys to assess the perception of current food and beverage options and employee readiness for new healthy food choices. Surveying staff post-implementation of healthy food choices can be a key way to identify satisfaction with the new healthier food and beverage items, and identify areas for further improvement.

Download sample survey questions. 

Chicago has made offering healthy food options a priority at both the City level and through efforts by the Parks District. Use the resources below to learn more about their healthy vending initiatives.

• A Blueprint for Healthier Vending discusses approaches used to change vending policy in city buildings. To read A Blueprint for Healthier Vending, click here.
• Healthy Snack Vending: the Chicago Park District Experience & Resource Guide discusses lessons learned from the Chicago Park District’s experience developing, instituting, enforcing and evaluating their healthy vending efforts. Read this document.

FitArlington (Virginia’s) Healthy Vending Scope of Services for Employee Locations provides model contract language for use with contractors and specifies nutrition standards and product specifications, along with common snack products meeting the dietary guidelines set for County vending machines.

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Pasadena’s City Council unanimously adopted a Healthy Snack and Beverage Vending and Procurement Policy on October 3, 2011. This policy not only provides healthier nutritional content for the residents and employees using vending machines, but also empowers city staff to be role models of good nutrition. This Healthy Meetings Manual, designed to help City of Pasadena employees choose and provide appropriate snack foods and beverages that meet the policy standards, may be useful for other cities, towns and counties developing a healthy food procurement policy.

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Efforts to improve food choices at federal facilities have been led in part by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). In support of GSA’s actions to increase healthy and sustainable food and beverage options and operations at federal workplaces, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and GSA have worked collaboratively to create this document, which proposes specific food, nutrition, and sustainability guidelines to complement the GSA procurement guidelines.

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This Model State Bill to expand healthy food choices in vending machines for state employees could be adapted for use at the local level.

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) implements an array of programs to address the increasing prevalence of obesity in the U.S. population. This case study describes the inception, development and implementation of the Health and Sustainability Guidelines for Federal Concessions and Vending Operations.

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The New York City Food Standards provide a sample of food standards for food purchased and meals and snacks served by a City agency.

View or download an outline of the food standards

View or download the Executive Order visit

The King County Healthy Vending Guidelines, adopted by the King County Board of Health, provide recommendations for the nutritional quality of food and beverages in vending machines in King County, Washington.

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These sample healthy vending guidelines provide sample policies to support and sustain healthy vending as well as marketing strategies to promote healthy options for people working for, visiting, and being served by local government agencies.

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Procurement requirements have the potential to positively influence consumer’s food-purchasing behaviors. This study reviews and compares nutrition standards and other best practices implemented recently in a large county government and across 10 municipalities in Los Angeles County.

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UNC Center Training and Research Translation recently hosted a Healthy Food Procurement webinar, featuring an initiative developed by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) to create healthier food environments through the adoption and implementation of nutrition standards and healthy food purchasing practices in all County of Los Angeles departments that purchase, distribute or sell food. Los Angeles County’s model can be replicated by state, county and city health departments. The webinar includes an overview of the intervention, the implementation, resources needed and lessons learned.

View the slides and recording of the webinar

This policy brief provides rationale and guidance for implementing a statewide, multi-agency healthy food procurement policy.

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