Healthy building design strategies for nutrition & hydration

Healthy Building Interiors That Promote Nutrition & Hydration 

Just like adequate sleep and regular movement, nutrition and hydration play a key role in human health, meaning healthy building consultants need to consider how these elements of the building occupant experience will be affected by architectural, engineering and facilities management decisions made during the construction or refurbishment process.

While there are of course any number of external socio-cultural and psychological influences at play in occupant health, a building’s interiors can indeed should play a positive role in promoting healthy habits and behaviors. The leading healthy building standard ‘WELL’ even has an entire section devoted to the subject.

So how can healthy building consultants positively impact nutrition and hydration in particular for residents, office workers and students? The design of a healthy building should seamlessly integrate design strategies, policies and practices to encourage positive behavioral change.

The availability of healthy food choices and adequate numbers of filtered water stations on each floor can go a long way in this sense but we can go well beyond that into the layout of eating spaces, what is known as ‘strategic dining design’, educational signage and promotional messaging, the specification of rooftop gardens and vegetable boxes, even policies that specify the local sourcing of ingredients used in canteens, or healthy snack options in vending machines, for example.

Mindful Eating Spaces and Strategic Dining Design in Healthy Buildings

The design and layout of eating spaces in a healthy building as well as access to specific types of food and beverage options can have a tangible impact on occupant dietary choices over the long-term.

For example, communal eating spaces help to encourage a more mindful approach to eating, as well as social engagement, as opposed to eating alone in front of the TV say.

The WELL building standard is particularly committed to this idea of designated places for food intake as a key driver of overall occupant mental health and wellbeing.

Design of eating areas in healthy buildings

In addition, the WELL standard encourages designating eating times to increase the likelihood that people will eat in groups and reap the full benefits of a shared, collective experience one or more times each day (see WELL Nutrition section). 

Within healthy buildings, several other wellness interior design strategies can be put in place to promote nutrition and hydration further.

For example, eating away from home in an office or educational environment is often associated with poorer dietary habits, so including basic kitchen fixtures such as chopping boards, colanders and food prep knives, a microwave and generously sized refrigerators for storing food can all help make small, incremental improvements to occupant diets (see WELL Nutrition). 

Food display strategies in healthy buildings

In addition, in the case that food or drink is provided by a workplace or school cafeteria, for example, the display of this food can impact consumption habits.

In the context of a healthy building plan, an increase in the visibility of healthy food options makes such options convenient and top-of-mind. This can be done through strategies such as providing easily reachable fruits and vegetables in the line of site for each diner, by placing clearly visible drinking water access points, or even through a “healthy convenience” rapid checkout line. All of this helps reduce tendencies for sugary drinks, junk food options and sweet snacks.

Finally, the ambiance of the healthy interior space itself can impact how people interact with their food. For example, glaring lights and loud noises can cause frustration or low level anxiety, leading to reduced eating times, and overeating as a result (by not allowing the body time to recognize it has reached a point of satiety), both detrimental to nutrition, digestion and weight management (Anthes). 

Nutrition – promoting dining strategies for healthy interiors:

• Designated eating spaces

• Adequate food preparation and storage areas

• Priority given to healthy food in terms of visibility and convenience

• A comfortable, stress-free ambiance to encourage slow, mindful eating

Use of Signage Prompts and Labeling in healthy design interiors

The use of food-related signage and promotional messaging has been shown to impact our nutritional choices. Strategies such as including nutritional information, deliberately promoting healthy products, or using signage to guide consumers towards healthy products are all useful interventions that leverage environmental psychology principles. 

Including nutritional information and health warnings on food can increase a healthy building occupant’s chances of making an informed food consumption decision. Whether that be allergy related, vitamin content, or calorie-based, the information can be subtly communicated without being overpowering or didactic.

In addition, food advertising has been shown to have direct and indirect impacts on consumers and nutrition. Children are especially susceptible to advertising, which may suggest that in places such as schools, promoting and marketing healthy options may have a positive impact over say, the extreme alternative of selling out to big brands pushing their sweetened products to children for example.

Healthy food advertising has been proven to increase the selection of healthy food choices. Although this concept is often applied to places like grocery stores, it can be used in cafeterias and workplace eating rooms to encourage healthy habits as well.

Along the vein of advertising, smart signage and visual guides can help nudge more nutritious food and drink choices. Visual aids can be used in and around eating areas to encourage the consumption of fruits, vegetables, and healthier drinking sources such as water.

Something as simple as an arrow guiding consumers towards healthier options can influence decisions. Educational signage can also be placed in locations outside of the eating areas—for example, colorful signs denoting the benefits of water consumption and healthy meals. 

Nutrition-promoting visuals and signage in healthy interiors: 

• Include nutritional information on and near food

• Advertise healthy options (rather than processed food products)

• Use signage and visual guides to promote nutrition

Local Sourcing of Food for healthy building occupants

Locally grown food not only increases access to healthy nutrition options for a healthy building occupant, it also provides social and environmental benefits. When possible, community or educational gardens should be integrated into wellness real estate projects, be they residential, workplace or learning environments.

It has been shown that people who are engaged in gardening have higher levels of fruit and vegetable consumption, as well as improving other aspects of life—such as community connectivity, educational opportunities, and anxiety reduction (WELL). So a communal rooftop garden, no matter how small, can be a modest investment with tangible impacts for the overall healthy building strategy.

Gardens on a project site can provide opportunities for building occupants to connect with the land and the food they eat through learning, as well as acting as a local source of produce for cafeterias, if delivered at scale.

In the case of children, gardening can increase food knowledge and increase their willingness to try more vegetables, breaking down the barrier between the food on their plate and the natural cycle of growing / harvesting (Anthes). Eating habits are learned through our environmental cues—making gardening a very powerful tool to increase our knowledge and connection to nutrition, especially in students and children. 

Depending on density constraints, the inclusion of rooftop gardens is becoming more popular in healthy buildings as they can be used even in high-density urban locations, while also providing a wealth of environmental benefits such as cooling / reducing the urban heat island effect, increased biodiversity and direct access to the calming, restorative benefits of nature for the building occupants. 

Local Food Sourcing Strategies for Healthy Buildings: 

• Source food locally and provide healthy produce to cafeterias and building occupants

• Include gardening to connect occupants to food

• Use gardens as an educational and community fostering opportunity

Healthy Building Certification Systems on design for Nutrition and Hydration

Various healthy building certification systems provide a guide to nutrition-based health and design strategies. Most notably, WELL, Fitwel, and the Living Building Challenge offer insight and place varying levels of importance on nutrition and hydration. 

The WELL Building Standard contains an entire concept, ‘Nourishment’ that discusses the importance of healthy diets and how our environments can promote this goal.

This standard focuses on factors such as increasing access to fruits and vegetables, nutritional transparency, food advertising, production, and preparation, as well as the concept of mindful eating (WELL). More information on the nourishment concept within the WELL healthy building standard can be found here. 

Fitwel contains a ‘Food and Beverage’ Standard and a ‘Health Programming’ section that mention strategies to promote healthy eating.

This standard recommends certain types of on-site dining services and what food should be available, as well as implementing policies such as nutrition programs, healthy cooking classes or gardening workshops. More information on the Fitwel healthy building standard can be found here. 

Although the Living Building Challenge green building standard doesn’t have a section specifically focused on nutrition, it has an imperative that focuses on urban agriculture.

This section mentions the importance of dedicating a space for growing food on site, connecting people to locally grown healthy nourishment options. More about the Place Petal and urban agriculture imperative can be found here. 

Sources:

WELL v2 Wellness Real Esatte Standard

Fitwel healthy building standard

Living Building Challenge green building standard

Anthes, Emily. “3. STAIR MASTERS.” The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness, Scientific American/Picador, New York, 2021. 

Healthy workplace wellness nutritional strategies

How can nature-inspired nutrition help us perform in the workplace?

What lessons can nature teach us about what to eat and drink during our work day in order to boost performance, creativity and concentration levels as part of a healthy building plan?

This is going to come with some caveats because, no matter what anyone tells you, there simply is no one size fits all solution, just as there is no one diet that will be equally suited for everyone on the planet. What we can establish however are some fundamental principles, largely inspired by our evolutionary history.

Opt for a real food diet

There's a general acceptance now that processed foods and refined carbohydrates with long ingredient lists have no place in a healthy, high-performance diet. That includes most cereals, industrially produced bread and biscuits - all of which can feature prominently in Western diet breakfast routines.

Instead, for performance in the workplace we’d do better to shift to what is called a whole food or real food diet, aiming to consume a wide variety of vegetables, fruits and nuts each day as the foundations of our food consumption pyramid.

People and planet considerations in nutrition

If possible, buy locally sourced, in season and non-GMO / organic in origin. That means maximum nutritional benefit for you and minimal impact on the planet. This simple purchasing strategy equates to a healthier gut microbiome and less food miles.

It may also add 20% onto your weekly shopping bill but you’ll notice that it is meat, fish, dairy and alcohol that really pushes the cost up.

Reduce your consumption of those food groups to focus on eating less but of higher quality and the numbers are likely to balance out each week.

Nutritional experimentation to find your energy sweet spot

When we reconsider what fuel our body and mind really need to perform optimally, a little experimentation can go a really long way. First though, you’ll need to drop your preconceptions of ‘fuel’ equating to frequent consumption of carbohydrate sources, be that wheat, oats, potatoes or rice. Those days are gone for those of lucky enough to allow ourselves the luxury of choice.

Upping your intake of nutrient dense fresh vegetables, grains and legumes in a rainbow of colours with modest (i.e. 1-2) portions of low-sugar fruits each day should be ‘ground zero’ for each day’s meal plan, no matter how loosely you interpret the term. To win at your own personal workplace wellness nutrition, this is our basic building block.

From there, we can look to consume foods high in healthy fats such as nuts, seeds , coconut, avocado and whole fat yoghurt as additional ‘substance’ to bulk up the meals.

Those eating meat, fish and cheese can integrate them into the baseline meal plan as well, leaving a relatively modest allocation for complex carbs such as sweet potato, a slice of sourdough bread from time to time, and so on.

Intermittent fasting for cognitive performance

For some, success with intermittent fasting can be a game-changer in productivity terms at work. It’s a remarkably simple nutrition strategy with impressive benefits for both mind and body, plus it is a time-saver - an especially appealing benefit for the perennially ‘busy’ and overworked!

A 16 hours OFF / 8 hours ON (a.k.a “16/8”) approach equates to consuming all of your daily food quota in an eight-hour “eating window”. For example, breakfast, lunch and a snack mid-afternoon before fasting until the following morning. Or lunch, snack and dinner followed by a fast until lunchtime the next day.

Once that becomes easy enough, and you have begun a genuine conversation with yourself about the quantity and timing of food that is actually needed to feel comfortable, you can push it to 18/6, 20/4, 22/2 and eventually a full 24hr fast.

The net results of this are a tangible sense of enhanced mental clarity, a certain lightness in the stomach that proves strangely liberating, and the realisation that three meals a day are optional, so skipping an airport dinner while travelling home one evening really isn’t much of a hardship at all.

When we look back through evolutionary time, having three regular meals a day is a novelty, our genes can handle eating less, in fact we are likely over-eating on occasions, which in turn can result in decreased performance and feelings of tiredness during the work day.

Healthy drinks for wellness nutrition in the workplace or healthy co-working office

If plain filtered water is just not your thing, try fruit-infused water and of course herbal teas while avoiding fruit juices and soft drinks that are high in sugar and low in fiber.

All they do is cause your sugar levels to spike in the short-term, which results in a clash. If you don’t notice that effect in yourself, it likely means you are consuming excessive amounts of sugar! Cut out sugar sources for 10-14 days to take yourself back to neutral then try again.

When you're consuming whole fruit juices, you want the whole fruit, literally, rather than a filtered version of the fruit. If making smoothies or juices at home, always aim to balance fruit with vegetables.

Coffee consumption in the healthy office

Coffee drinkers can take some comfort in knowing that an espresso contains far lower caffeine than filter due to the water-ground beans contact time. As espresso has a shorter contact time of around 25-seconds the beans it’s actually better to drink a number of shots, rather than filter during the day. Strange but true.

Look for recently roasted, fresh beans, ideally with a single origin of the Arabica bean rather than the inferior Robusta bean. Consider that some coffee blends sold in packs in your supermarket could be. 6-12 months old by the time it makes it into your cup whereas buying from a specialist local roaster reduces that timeline to a matter of weeks.

Green Tea & Matcha for mental wellness

The gold standard in workplace health drinks remains, without doubt, lightly brewed green tea, the Chinese and Japanese are well on to the benefits, both short term and long-term. It's a powerhouse for its amino acid profiles and polyphenols, meaning it's good for your brain, and it's cleansing for your gut biome as well.

Researchers believe ROS and oxidative stress play a significant role in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, contributing to neuronal damage in other words. Antioxidant catechins may help to protect against these diseases, a theory supported by preliminary animal studies of EGCG.[4]

Research studies also show that a polyphenol rich diet can have a positive impact on preventing memory impairment associated with age-related disease such as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Our daily regime includes blueberries and a green tea supplement for their combined polyphenol power, for this very reason. [4]

For more on green tea see our article here on the Biofit website.

Biohacking in the workplace

If your energy, productivity and focus are not where you want them to be the first thing is to look at how your sleep, diet and exercise are dialled in, with sleep being arguably the most important of all!

Natural nootropics are a way for you to perhaps enhance your cognitive performance or work just a little bit more effectively thanks to their mental focus benefits. They're all about boosting feelings of positivity and wellbeing while reducing anxiety levels.

Look for Gingko Biloba, Ginseng, Ashwagandha, Bacopa Monnieri… all easy to find in a health food store or shop around online. You've got L-theanine which is an extraction from that wonderful green tea again, it serves to reduce the jitters of consuming caffeine as an interesting side-effect!

Medicinal mushrooms such as Reishi, Lion's Mane and Cordyceps are all worthy additions to a ‘stack’ of daily nootropics with a workplace wellness orientation.

It's all entirely natural a little experimentation can really go a long way when it comes to playing with how nature can can help you in your workplace performance.

For more information on the nourishment section of the WELL Building Standard, the healthy building reference, see here.