CSPI’s vision for public food procurement and food service
Our federal, state, and local governments leverage public food purchasing and food service to model healthier food environments, improve diet quality and health, and transform the food system to advance racial equity, climate justice, and food sovereignty.
Spending of public food dollars transparently reflects community values, including human health, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, valued workforce, and local economies. This vision is realized in all manner of anchor institutions such as government buildings, parks, hospitals, universities, and correctional facilities, and programs, like congregate or home-delivered meals for older adults, children, or people with disabilities. The increased demand fosters product reformulation and innovation throughout the food supply, and the increased supply improves access to healthier, ethically produced foods and beverages for all consumers.
We actualize this vision by advocating for comprehensive, values-aligned public food purchasing and service policies that
advance healthy diets according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) and
advance the values and core principles defined in the Anchors in Action Aligned Framework (AiA).
Dietary Guidelines for Americans
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) has been jointly developed and published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) every five years, beginning in 1980 and codified in the 1990 National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act. The DGAs are intended to provide science-based advice on what to eat and drink to meet nutrient needs, promote health, and prevent disease. According to the most recent edition, the 2020-2025 DGA, the core elements that make up a healthy dietary pattern include:
Vegetables of all types
Fruits, especially whole fruit
Grains, at least half of which are whole-grain
Dairy, including fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese and fortified soy alternatives
Protein foods, including lean meats, poultry, and eggs; seafood, beans, peas, and lentils; and nuts, seeds, and soy products
Oils, including vegetable oils and oils in food, such as seafood and nuts
A healthy dietary pattern also limits added sugar, saturated fat, sodium, and alcoholic beverages.
A number of government agencies and organizations have developed standards to operationalize the DGA in various food service venues. The Food Service Guidelines for Federal Facilities are one model for applying the DGA to prepared and packaged foods and beverages in government cafeterias and concessions.
The Anchors in Action Aligned Framework
The Anchors in Action Alliance (AiA) is a first-of-its-kind, national, cross-sector partnership among the Center for Good Food Purchasing, Health Care Without Harm, and Real Food Challenge. Each of the three organizations sets independent standards for values-aligned food purchasing in public institutions, health care, and higher education, respectively. In 2021, as each of the three organizations was approaching an update of their respective standards, they set out to establish a unified set of core principles, value definitions, product and supplier criteria, and institutional strategies that would serve as the foundation for each of their updates. The result was the AiA Aligned Framework, which provides shared definitions, certifications and attributes, measures, and strategies to operationalize five core values in institutional food purchasing:
Local and community-based economies: Vibrant and resilient regional economies are a forum for communities to regain power in decision-making within their local food system and the land that supports it.
Environmental sustainability: Environmentally sustainable farms and food businesses build healthy ecosystems by improving soil health, increasing biodiversity, and reducing the carbon and water footprint of food production; while advancing public health and worker safety.
Valued workforce: Farm and food chain workers have the right to freedom of association and to bargain collectively, as well as the right to livable wages and healthy and safe working conditions to ensure that food workers can live and work with dignity.
Animal welfare: Animal welfare encompasses all aspects of animals’ well-being, and high animal welfare is achieved when animals’ physical, mental, and behavioral needs are met throughout their lives.
Community health and nutrition: Supporting communities in shaping their food environment with culturally relevant, nourishing foods improves health and well-being, ensures food sovereignty, and builds resilience to withstand and recover from economic and environmental disruptions.
The Aligned Framework also recognizes three core principles to guide values-based food procurement:
Racial equity: acknowledging and rectifying the structural barriers that prevent people of color from the opportunities and resources to thrive.
Climate justice: an acknowledgment that climate disruption often has a disproportionate impact on frontline communities. It is the mitigation of those impacts and a just transition to a reciprocal, regenerative relationship with our environment, because all beings have the basic right to live in an environment that promotes their wellbeing.
Food sovereignty: is “the right of Peoples to define their own policies and strategies for sustainable production, distribution, and consumption of food, with respect for their own cultures and their own systems of managing natural resources and rural areas, and is considered to be a precondition for Food Security.”
You can view each organization’s updated standards based on the Aligned Framework:
A note to readers
Some resources in this toolkit focus on applying one value to public food purchasing (e.g., an example policy establishing nutrition standards for city agencies in New York City), while others focus on more than one (e.g., a Solicitations Toolkit for values-based food procurement) or all the values of interest (e.g., a case study of the process of enacting Boston’s GFPP ordinance). While we recommend that new policies address all of the values in the AiA Framework, there are broadly applicable lessons and best practices to be gleaned from prior efforts with a narrower scope. Furthermore, depending on the community, it may be pragmatic to begin by addressing one value to lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive approach.