Benchmarking local food environment policies: a Local Food-EPI application in the Netherlands

Background

Improving food environments is essential to achieve public health, sustainability, and equity goals. Local governments can influence food environments, yet insights into local policy efforts remain limited. A lack of benchmarking limits transparency and the ability to identify best practices and policy gaps. This study, as part of FOODPATH, addresses this gap by applying a Local Food Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI) in a Dutch municipality to assess local food environment policies.

Methods

Using a policy analysis design, the Local Food-EPI tool (adapted from INFORMAS) with 6 policy domains (e.g. marketing), 5 infrastructure support domains (e.g. leadership), and 50 indicators was applied in a medium-sized Dutch municipality (Ede). Local experts rated policy implementation on each indicator against international best practices (online survey; 5-point scale from very weak to very strong), identified actions to improve food environments (workshop), and prioritized these on importance, feasibility, and equity impact (online survey).

Results

Experts rated municipal policy implementation mostly as ‘weak’ or ‘average’. Few indicators were rated as ‘very weak’ (n = 5) or ‘strong’ (n = 3), none as ‘very strong’. Experts formulated 9 policy actions and 18 infrastructure support actions to improve local food environments. Highest-prioritised actions targeted healthy, sustainable food access for children in school and sport settings, unhealthy food marketing restrictions near schools, and strengthened food governance through dedicated leadership, collaborations, and integrated policy.

Conclusions

This Local Food-EPI application, by benchmarking policies and engaging local experts, revealed clear implementation gaps and generated actionable policy strategies. This positions the tool as a promising, replicable approach for municipalities worldwide seeking to improve local food environments, while strengthening accountability through monitoring and benchmarking.

Key messages

• Applying a Local Food-EPI tool in a Dutch municipality revealed clear implementation gaps in local food environment policies and generated concrete, prioritized actions for improvement.

• This study shows how local food environment policies can be benchmarked and monitored, strengthening accountability for policy implementation to achieve public health, sustainability and equity goals.