This is a legacy version of the WELL Building Standard. Please check the latest version here.

Artificial ingredients

Artificial ingredients

Intent: 

To help occupants avoid artificial colors, sweeteners and preservatives in food.

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.

Yes, foods and beverages are considered to be provided on a daily basis if they are available to occupants each day. This is irrespective of the frequency of delivery.

Yes, all foods and beverages that are sold and provided must comply with the requirements. This includes packaged and prepared items, as well as all items in vending machines.

The food and beverage labeling requirements are applicable to all projects regardless of local code, however a project team may submit an Alternative Adherence Path (AAP) for review if they believe the labeling provided by the project meets the intent of the feature. The project team may need to conduct their own analysis of the food and beverages being provided to confirm nutritional information.

Foods and beverages prepared or packaged on site can utilize menu boards and signage at the point of decision to convey the nutrition and allergy information criteria. Foods and beverages packaged onsite can also decide to add this information to the packing instead.

To meet the WELL Building Standard requirements, meals prepared on-site must include nutritional information. This may require a project to test meals for nutritional information or calculate the expected nutritional information based on the ingredients used. Labeling should be clearly visible to occupants.