REAL program: Like LEED, but for healthful eateries
July 24, 2012
Released earlier this year, the Rand Corp. study was a sucker punch to the kidneys. It revealed something that many folks already suspected but had developed a kind of willful denial about: About 96 percent of the entrees served at American chain restaurants exceeded the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommended limits for fat, sodium and saturated fat.
The nutritional bombshell was bad enough, but Lawrence Williams, president and founder of the U.S. Healthful Food Council, understood a darker truth within this gloomy report: Restaurants have little incentive to change their habits. Eateries and food-service providers, Williams notes, like to claim, “If people demanded healthier food, we’d give it to them.”
Williams, 44, and his start-up group want to give restaurateurs an incentive to slim down their offerings.
The problem, as Williams sees it, is that Americans increasingly turn to meals outside the home to satisfy their hunger. That trend, compounded by the fact that restaurants are serving calorie bombs, can only validate what a recent forecast suggested: that 42 percent of Americans will be obese by 2030, greatly adding to the country’s health-care costs.
Government solutions to combat the obesity crisis — informational campaigns, mandatory calorie information on menus, Let’s Move! — will not move the needle in the restaurant world, Williams predicts, because they do not give operators much motivation to change.
The U.S. Healthful Food Council plans to borrow a page from the U.S. Green Building Council and its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (or LEED) program, which awards points for environmentally friendly building designs, which in turn can lead to government incentives and higher property values. Those are tangible benefits an owner can believe in.
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