A new guide for food and grocery companies to help their employees eat more healthily at work has been launched by IGD.
The guide, which follows a series of in-depth experiments and research, offers simple and practical tips that any employer providing food and drink at work can implement. Aimed at management and catering providers, the guide helps business leaders to promote wellbeing at work and provides step-by-step guidance for those involved in catering.
Full-time workers consume a third of their daily calories at work and workplace restaurants have a big influence on dietary habits and health, according to IGD, which worked with the Behaviour and Health Research Unit (BHRU) at the University of Cambridge to conduct one of the largest experiments in a real-life setting to test how to help people make healthier choices in workplace restaurants.
The experiments took place between 2016 and 2018 at 19 workplace restaurants in 14 companies, and involved 17,000 people. Three interventions were tested: offering a balanced choice of food and drink; reducing the portion sizeof food for main meals, sides, desserts and cakes; and calorie labelling.
“When we set out to promote healthy eating at work, we found there was little firm evidence to base our recommendations on,' said IGD chief executive Joanne Denney-Finch. 'To fill this gap we partnered with the University of Cambridge, and have been supported by many food companies that volunteered to participate.
'Today, we’re sharing our conclusions, in the form of a practical guide, to inspire healthier eating at work. Our first aim is to help the millions of people that work along the food and grocery chain, but our recommendations apply to any workplace, so there is an even greater opportunity to motivate other sectors to follow our lead.'
Copies of the guide are available here.
