When planning a meeting or setting up a training event, it is important to think about the foods you want to serve. In a typical meeting, you might find doughnuts and pastries, items of low nutritional value. Serving healthier food options will stay in line with your organization’s wellness goals and help promote a healthy eating environment.

Food Ideas:

More suggestions can be found in the CSPI’s "Healthy Meeting Toolkit" and will help you to improve the health and wellness of your employees. See these pages for some highlights:

• Page 2: General Nutrition Guidelines for Meetings
• Pages 11-12: Sample Menu Items
• Pages 15-16: Suggests “Swappable Items” to ease transition to healthier meetings

Still need some convincing about the importance of healthy meetings? See Pages 4-5 for more information about why offering health foods in meetings is important. There are also some FAQs that might cover questions that you have too! Other than nutrition, this document highlights ways to incorporate physical activity, tobacco-free talks, and sustainability messages into your healthy meetings.

Additional Resources:

• Here's a great resource from UC Berkeley about how to plan healthier meetings and events
• Try one of more of these 9 Hacks to a Healthier Meeing or Conference from CSPI
• A few of these resources were based on this PDF from the School of Public Health at the UofM!

Physical Activity Breaks:

Have you ever found yourself losing focus during a meeting that is 30 minutes or more? Taking an active break will help keep you alert during a long meeting. Studies have shown that taking brief breaks will help to improve your focus. Keep in mind that being active during your break doesn’t mean you have to get sweaty - if you take 5 minutes to stretch or move around you will feel more refreshed! Here are some resources that have great ideas for short breaks at work or meetings:

• Physical Activity Break ideas from Eat Smart, Move More NC