Our UBC community members work and learn within a demanding, high-performance academic environment. Having access to nourishing food and beverages, and the necessary information to make healthy choices, helps them thrive. A Healthy Beverage Initiative is an important step towards changing our on-campus environment to better support their wellbeing.
The Healthy Beverage Initiative is a collaboration between faculty, staff, student, and vendor stakeholders, to create a campus environment where it's easier to make healthier choices. HBI supports the Wellbeing Strategic Framework target to "reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages by 50% by 2025". Through community engagement, the Food and Nutrition Committee identified three actions to support this target:
Action 1: Encourage tap water consumption
Action 2: Promote healthier beverages choices in our community
Action 3: Modify our environment to support healthier beverage consumption
Background: Why a Healthy Beverage Initiative?
- What are sugar-sweetened beverages?
- The not-so-sweet stats on sugar-sweetened beverages
- Getting started with HBI
Action 1: Encourage tap water consumption
Explore and implement opportunities to adapt our environment to increase safe drinking water consumption.
Projects and Initiatives
- SEEDS sustainability projects
Action 2: Promote healthier beverage choices within our community
Create a campaign to encourage our community members to make healthier, more nutritious beverage choices, and promote drinking water.
Projects and Initiatives
- UBC Drinks Tap Water Campaign
- SEEDS Sustainability Projects
Action 3: Modify our environment to support healthier beverage consumption.
Food service providers commit to making meaningful changes to the beverage environment to encourage healthier beverage choices.
- Negotiating pouring rights contracts
- Modifying dining hall offerings
- Vending at UBC
VISION FOR A NUTRITIONALLY SOUND CAMPUS
The UBC Action Framework for a Nutritionally Sound Campus set out the following vision: “A nutritionally sound campus increases intake of safe, healthy, and sustainable food, supports development of nutrition skills and knowledge, and promotes health and wellbeing for all members of the UBC community.” One of the goals of this vision is to increase water consumption at UBC.
Jointly supported by all major food-provider stakeholders at UBC, the Healthy Beverage Initiative was launched to further one of the goals of this vision and support UBC Wellbeing by increasing tap water consumption and reducing consumption of sugar sweetened beverages.