ICYMI: Health Depts, Restaurants Try to Set up Program to ID Healthy Menu Options

Editor’s note: This article was published earlier this week. We’re republishing it here in case you missed it:

Many people make choices to eat healthy when they’re at home — and then go to a restaurant where it isn’t always clear if the food they’re ordering is also healthy, says David Knauf, director of the Darien Health Department.

Knauf and other local health officials are also interested in encouraging residents to eat healthy meals when they go out to dinner, so some local health departments — in Darien, Norwalk, New Canaan, Fairfield and Westport-Weston — are talking with restaurant owners about developing a “Healthy Restaurant menu program” that would identify and highlight healthy food options on menus.

“We’re excited that a lot of folks are really health-conscious and are paying attention to what they’re eating at home,” he said. “It would also be very nice to have some continuity when they’re eating out.”

The program, which would be entirely voluntary for any restaurant to join, would have local health inspectors review menu options identified as healthy. Inspectors could give a kind of seal of approval which could then be publicized.

Officials at local health departments have been talking to restaurant owners and managers and developing the proposal since at least last summer. They’re now looking for funding and have discussed with publicists what kind of name, logo and promotional materials might be used.

We hope to get the project up and going sometime by the end of this summer,” Norwalk Health Director Tim Callahan said. “The biggest obstacle right now for us is to find some money to fund some of the software and consulting time that we need to make sure the recipies comply.”

A committee with representatives from the various local health departments has been using the name “Greater Norwalk Health Initiative,” said Darien Health Inspector Mindy Chambrelli, but “the name will change once we delve a little more deeply in the branding and marketing of the program.

In a letter recently sent by Chambrelli to area restaurants, she said organizers hope to have the promotional materials ready by this summer and invited restaurateurs to contact her if they want to get involved in the program.

“The idea is to kind of foster healthy lifestyles even when you’re enjoying yourself eating out,” Knauf said.

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