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

Mindful eating

Mindful eating

Intent: 

To encourage mindful eating behaviors and socialization by providing communal eating spaces.

Eating spaces include spaces that provide individuals the opportunity to eat away from their desk with others. This may include tables and chairs located within cafeterias, break rooms and other dining or break out spaces. Eating spaces may be located on-site or within 200 m [650 ft] of the project boundary. Eating spaces cannot be restricted for a specific and limited period of time, for example a conference room.

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, a restaurant, cafe or canteen located within the building may count as an eating area if it is open to all building occupants. In other words, building occupants should be able to use the tables and chairs in the eating area at any time, regardless of whether they purchased food at the canteen, cafe or restaurant. This applies even when the canteen, cafe or restaurant are not included in the WELL project boundary as long as they are within the building or within 200 m [650 ft] of the building entrance.