The Culinary Institute of America is one of the most prestigious cooking schools in the world. Aspiring chefs come from all over to pursue their vision of food, of cuisine. The CIA and the Harvard School of Public Health have partnered to bring the food service industry, nutrition sector, public health and environmental sector together in their Menus of Change Initiative. Food Tank (FT) had the opportunity to speak with Amy Myrdal Miller (AM), Director of Programs and Culinary Nutrition at the Culinary Institute of America, about the initiative.

Food Tank is a think tank focused on a feeding the world better. We conduct research and cultivate networks of people, organizations, and content to push for food system change.

AM: Our Menus of Change initiative grew out of our long-term partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health. We’d been working with them since the early 2000s on an initiative we call Worlds of Healthy Flavors, which was designed to provide leaders from the food service industry with science based information on what is healthy eating and then to provide them with culinary insights on plant based cuisines from around the world. We need better innovation and inspiration from world cuisines to bring more flavor to people, and we know consumers are looking for this. We know plant based dietary patterns are supported by consumer values and we know there is a sustainability tie in.

The industry is starting to not only ask what’s the most healthful option, but if this is also a sustainable option. They were feeling pressure from the recession, and starting to think about menu design for long-term business success.

So we said, we’re the culinary experts, Harvard are the nutrition science experts. What we need to do is tie in the environmental science community and bring in business leaders to develop a new initiative and this is how Menus of Change was formed.

We published our first Menus of Change annual report and this is written for chefs in a very consumer friendly tone. Here’s what the science says. Here’s directional guidance. And here’s how you can make better decisions when it comes to the health of your consumer, the health of the planet and the health of your business. We included a dashboard rated on a five-point scale to show how the industry is doing in different areas and then each subsequent year we’ll publish a new one to show if there’s been stagnation in an area, improvement or a drop-off in success.