Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs) associated with hospital menus is a win-win for reducing the climate impact of healthcare systems, and food systems. Animal products and ultra-processed foods have higher GGEs, and reducing these is recommended. Potential strategies to achieve this in foodservice settings include: redesigning recipes to adjust quantities or types of ingredients, redesigning and restructuring menus, labelling menus and special days such as “meat free monday”. However, before you take action, first you need to measure what the climate impact of the menu is. Without a baseline measurement of GGEs from a menu, there is no way to monitor progress, compare with others or evaluate changes.
We will describe how we measured the climate impact of our hospital menu, what the baseline findings of GGEs were and how we modelled potential changes to the menu to explore their benefit. This presentation is targeted to anyone wanting to know ‘how to’ make their foodservice more sustainable. We will translate technical concepts and processes into information that is understandable for beginners and practical and relevant to various foodservice settings.
This project was undertaken in 2026 as a collaboration between hospital dietitians at Eastern Health and research dietitians at Monash University, with assistance from student dietitians. Eastern Health has a 2 week cycle menu using cook-chill dishes made at an off-site central production kitchen, fresh dishes made onsite and single serve portion controlled items. We will take the audience through each step:
Identifying the most appropriate way to measure climate impact. We determined the Global Warming Potential Star (GWP*) was the most suitable metric, and the GWP*-AUSNUT 2011-13 database developed by researchers in NSW (with GWP* value for over 5000 Australian foods) was the most suitable tool.
Creating a database of GWP* of the hospital menu. We matched each menu item to a food item in the AUSNUT 2011-2013 database, and then matched this to the corresponding GWP* value.
Using our database to analyse the GWP* of the hospital menu. We completed basic analyses on 1154 items to find the 10 menu items with the highest GWP* and compare the GWP* across days, meals and meal components. We found the top 10 items were all beef containing mains, and breakfast had a lower climate impact and was more consistent from day to day, compared to lunch and dinner. We also incorporated menu ordering data to analyse the GWP* accounting for the actual number of different items ordered by patients.
Modelling and comparing potential menu changes. We used our database to model potential changes to the menu to see how this would impact GWP*. Determining (on paper) which changes would create the most benefit informed what should be pursued, optimising time and effort.
This is a novel project describing, for the first time ever, the climate impact of a hospital menu, the process for measuring it using high quality, Australian specific data for Global Warming Potential Star (GWP*), and the predicted benefits when different menu changes are modelled.