A healthy food policy can help your food shelf. It establishes a vision and guidelines that focus on healthy eating among your clients. Once you complete a policy, including goals, you will to find many ways to make it come alive through the activities and initiatives outlined in this guide.
What you can do today
- Request a meeting with food shelf leadership. You may need to convince them to make health and nutrition a priority.
- Make a list of stakeholders who will have a vested interest in your policy and brainstorm ideas for engaging them.
How Extension can help
- Connect with Extension Educator Jamie Bain to help you draft a policy that addresses food selection and donation solicitation: jbain@umn.edu or 612-626-8762.
Find out more about promoting healthy eating at food shelves:
- Identify healthy food
- Source healthy food
- Work with local growers
- Ensure safety of healthy food
- Store Healthy Foods Properly
- Work with limited storage space
- Drive selection of healthy foods
- Provide practical information
- Find healthy recipes
- Enlist volunteers' help
- Include healthy foods in your backpack program
- Do cooking demonstrations
- Fund your healthy eating initiatives
Download the complete document: Promoting healthy eating at food shelves (PDF).
Related resource
Food Policy Networks — Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future — Find numerous resources for food policy work and join the national listserv.
Reviewed in 2018