Special diets

Special diets

Intent: 

To provide alternative food choices to individuals with food restrictions or allergies.

If a project does not sell or provide food and beverages on a daily basis, it is considered in compliance with the Nourishment precondition features 38-40 (and 43-44 when designated as preconditions) and is considered not having achieved optimization features 47 and 49 (and 43-44 when designated as optimizations). To demonstrate compliance, projects should simply add a note to explain their lack of daily food and beverage offerings within the 'Notes' column of the project checklist.

Note that all Nourishment optimizations will still appear on the project scorecard and contribute to the denominator when calculating scoring.

All meals provided by the owner must meet the requirements - at a minimum, this must be available to all building staff in order to pursue this Feature. Food and beverage providers leasing space as a tenant of the building are excluded from these requirements. Commercial kitchens are not applicable.

The intent of this feature is to accommodate special diets and ensure that individuals with restrictions have an equivalent alternative, such as the option of a vegetable sandwich instead of a meat sandwich. In this scenario, it is not sufficient to provide an apple instead of a sandwich, but a main course salad (or similar meal option) would meet the requirement and the feature intent.

The project can choose not to pursue this optimization; however, all Nourishment optimizations will still appear on the project scorecard and contribute to the denominator when calculating scoring. This differs from the Nourishment Preconditions, which are deemed "not applicable" if the project does not serve food on a daily basis.