New York City’s food initiatives
I’m having a had time keeping up with all the things the New York City food policy office is doing to improve the city’s food system, so I asked for, and got, an impressive list.
For starters, it has a plan: Food Forward NYC: A 10-Year Policy Plan
And its done a 2-Year Progress Report
The office published or supports the publishing of other city reports:
- Food Standards Compliance Report on the nutritional quality of the 219 million meals served City agencies
- NYC Food by the Numbers summarizing data on everything it’s doing
- Good Food Purchasing Dashboard with data on what the city buys
- Prioritizing Food Education in Our Public Schools: A Path to Developing a Healthy Next Generation, a guide to building healthy school communities.
- Cultivating Urban Agriculture, a planning document
It announces a new grant to the Department of Corrections to train prison foodservice workers to prepare plant-based meals
These are on top of initiatives to:
- Promote Healthy Food in New York City.
- Improve Food Standards and Good Food Purchasing
- Promote Healthy Foods in City Publications and in Advertising on City Property
- Hold Plant Powered Fridays in schools
- Improve standards for beverages offered in City vending machines
- Require chain restaurants to post sugars
- Serve healthier food in NYC-run hospitals
The Mayor’s Office of Food Policy has a remarkably low profile. Trying to find out who’s in it and what they are doing is not easy, which is why I wanted to try to get a handle on it.
I think Kate MacKenzie and her handful of colleagues are doing impresssive work, not least because of their outreach and partnership with multiple city agencies.
Impressive, indeed.
