Leading companies in the foodservice sector have pledged to make it easier for their customers to get their five-a-day, as the industry makes efforts to tackle a growing obesity crisis in the UK.
Greggs, accountancy firm PwC, frozen wholesaler Bidfood and catering giant Sodexo were among the 30 public and private organisations making a ‘veg pledge’ at the Vegetable Summit conferences in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff on 24 October.
High-street chain Greggs has committed to include at least one portion of vegetables in each of its soups and leaf-based salads, while PwC, in partnership with contract caterer Baxter Storey, will increase the amount of fruit and vegetables available at its canteens and improve its vegetarian and vegan options.
Bidfood said it would begin to feed its 5,000 employees two portions of vegetables a day and encourage its customers to include more on their menus by providing recipe suggestions.
And catering giant Sodexo has pledged to make all its dishes at least two-thirds plant-based, while increasing the number of vegetables it procures by ten per cent.
Meanwhile education and healthcare caterer The Healthy Food Company pledged that as many of its dishes “as possible” would be served with two portions of vegetables.
Summarising the pledges, Andrew Stephen of the Sustainable Restaurant Association said: “We’ve got businesses at scale that are looking to put two portions of veg at lunch for their staff and their customers; we’ve got quickservice and food-to-go outlets that are looking to increase the veg in a significant proportion of what you grab and go… and we’ve got businesses that are looking to put two portions of veg on every kid’s plate.”
Stephen stressed that these were not easy changes to make even though they might “feel a bit incremental”. “The amount of work to get that to happen in a business at scale is quite a lot of change in the real world,” he said.
But audience member Corinna Hawkes, a food policy expert from City University, criticised the pledges for not being ambitious enough.
“One could argue that commitments should be made to be more ambitious to push you a bit harder and that there could be policy frameworks in place to enable that to happen,” she said.
