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A Better Choice

Healthy options made easy in healthcare

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A Better Choice

A Better Choice for Healthcare

By implementing the A Better Choice Strategy, Hospital and Health Services can enhance the wellbeing of over 100,000 Queensland Health staff and provide positive benefits to the multitude of visitors who frequent these facilities each year.

As public institutions known for providing high quality health care, Hospitals and Health Services play an important role in supporting the wellbeing of Queenslanders. Role modelling healthier food and drink options in their food outlets and vending machines sends an important message to the community about healthy living.

A Better Choice supports retail outlets, vending machines, and hospital catering and fundraising suppliers to make healthier food and drinks the default option for staff and visitors. This initiative focuses on providing, promoting, and advertising nutritious options to encourage customers to make positive dietary choices that enhance their overall wellbeing.

The A Better Choice Food and Drink Supply Strategy for Queensland Healthcare Facilities (PDF, 5.15MB) applies to all public health services, and sets targets around the sale, provision, promotion and advertising of food and drinks on site. The strategy covers:

  • food outlets and coffee carts
  • vending machines
  • catering
  • fundraising and promotional activities.

The A Better Choice Food and Drink Supply Strategy for Queensland Healthcare Facilities supports retail and food outlets to make healthy options easy.

READ THE STRATEGY

The Health Service Directive

The strategy supports implementation of the Health Service Directive—Healthier Food and Drinks at Healthcare Facilities, which ensures that healthier food and drinks are sold, provided, promoted and advertised at healthcare facilities.

How to implement A Better Choice

Support is available to help your facility implement A Better Choice. The following steps can help you to get started.

Step 1 - Classify food and drinks

A Better Choice uses a traffic light system to classify products according to their nutritional value:

GREEN: Best nutritional value
AMBER: Some nutritional value
RED: Limited or no nutritional value

Each food and drink item sold, provided, promoted and advertised to staff and visitors will need to be assessed and classified as green, amber or red.

To assist with these assessments, healthcare facilities can access FoodChecker, a free online tool that classifies products, menus, and recipes according to the A Better Choice traffic light system.

This webinar provides an overview of FoodChecker.

For more methods and tips on classifying food and drinks, check out the A Better Choice Strategy for Queensland Healthcare Facilities.

Step 2 - Understand the targets

The A Better Choice Strategy sets targets around the type and amount of food and drinks that should be available in a food setting to help nudge customers towards a healthier choice. The next step to implementing A Better Choice is to work towards achieving these targets in your outlets.

For retail outlets the targets are to offer:

  • a minimum of 50% of healthy food and drinks from the green category
  • a maximum of 20% of unhealthy food from the red category
  • no unhealthy drinks from the red category, and
  • the remaining proportion can be food and drinks from the amber or green category.

For vending machines the targets are to offer:

  • a minimum of 50% of healthy drinks from the green category
  • a minimum of 30% of healthy food from the green category
  • a maximum of 20% of unhealthy food from the red category
  • no unhealthy drinks from the red category, and
  • the remaining proportion can be food and drinks from the amber or green category.

Assess the proportion of food and drink options available in each outlet in your facility, against the targets to determine where change is needed.

For more information on the targets, check out the A Better Choice Food and Drink Supply Strategy for Queensland Healthcare Facilities.

Step 3 - Plan for change

Once you have classified the food and drinks available in your outlet (Step 1), and compared these to the targets in A Better Choice (Step 2), develop a plan to make the changes needed to ensure that healthier food and drinks are available and promoted. There are a number of resources available to support implementation of A Better Choice (see below).

Supporting resources

Resources to support your facility to provide healthier food and drinks.

Fact sheets

Tips for healthier cooking
Healthy fillings for sandwiches, wraps, and rolls
Healthy hot food ideas
Healthy vending planograms

Case studies

How Children’s Health Queensland formed strong partnerships for ABC
Why more healthy food is available at Toowoomba’s Wellbean Co Café
Mater Hospital Brisbane — how its communication facilitated early success
How Metro North uses FoodChecker to make healthier options easy
Why consistency is key to healthy food environments in the south west

Videos

The following videos have been provided by the Victorian Healthy Eating Advisory Service. Copyright State of Victoria. Some imagery may represent the Victorian Healthy Choices Guidelines, however content is applicable to the implementation of the A Better Choice Strategy in Queensland.

Promoting healthy choices in food outlets

Promotional materials

Health and Wellbeing Queensland is trialling a new promotional campaign in Hospital and Health Services. The ‘Pick Me‘ campaign is designed to empower customers to look for healthier options when purchasing food on site. Results of the trial are currently being finalised.

Next steps

Use the support resources to start providing and promoting healthier options at your facility today.

Health and Wellbeing Queensland can provide tailored support for Hospital and Health Services. Contact us at abetterchoice@hw.qld.gov.au, to learn more or for assistance.

Last updated 18 December 2023