Wellness Watch March 2010

March marks the launch of our new Fitness Works at Work website and with it I will be contributing a monthly blog on ideas and comments on research findings and other health promotion issues. Since March is our first issue and also the American Dietetic Association’s National Nutrition Month^© it is an appropriate time to discuss a topic that comes up in discussions with human resource professionals – how can I get my food service on board the health promotion efforts of my organization?

Walking through a company cafeteria at lunch time, you can see the full spectrum of employee food choices –some good, some not so good.  I suspect though, that you will see a fair number of employees consuming hamburgers, french fries, chips, sodas, cookies and other not terribly nutritious foods. Understandably from a food service perspective, these foods make money and if you took out all the unhealthy foods, you would probably have an employee rebellion. However, your food service is your vendor and you have a right and, frankly, an obligation to talk with your chef and see where you can make inroads into providing and promoting healthy choices.

Vanessa Cavallaro, RD, President of the Massachusetts Dietetic Association and Fitness Works at Work presenter says “Compliment, don’t criticize and approach your food service vendor in a collaborative way. Making changes is a long term process and isn’t going to happen in a month.”  She suggests that small consistent healthy changes over time make the most sense and are the easiest way for employees to accept change.

Here are some other suggestions to get the conversation going:

• Make an appointment with the head chef. Have him or her pick a down time so you can have their full attention. Usually meeting later in the week and later is the day is better timing.
• Before meeting, make sure you are familiar with all the food offerings in the cafeteria.
• Look over your food service consumer website as there usually is lots of information and helpful bells and whistles. For example, on Sodexho’s Wellness and You! website, you can find a nutrition calculator for all of the items in their cafeteria, a weight management program, BMI calculator and other helpful links. Then you can explore ways to publicize the website to employees.
• Do some background reading ahead of time. Here are two helpful articles:  Healthy Eats: How to Overhaul the Worksite Cafeteria and Cafeteria and Vending Machine Guidelines: Implementing Healthier Options
• Start the discussion with what your food service is doing well –whether it is providing a regular healthy entre, a good salad bar, less sodium items, more broth-based soups and then brainstorm ways to promote these healthy items with employees. If these choices are selling, your food vendor will be more likely to make more healthy improvements.
• Consider tackling one area of the cafeteria first – soups, snacks, deli, grill, entrée, etc…. Get employees used to seeing new “healthy” items and let them build trust that the offerings will be tasty.  It will leave them wanting more.
• Plan advertising strategies well.  If you are working with a company that does not have an existing “healthy option” cafeteria program, how will you announce new items?
  • What “health” claims will you post on either the menu or cafeteria station signage?
  • Will you offer nutrition facts or more generalized statements (i.e., lower sugar, higher fiber, healthy fats, healthy proteins, lower sodium)?
  • Will you offer any “start up” incentives to boost employee participation?

In most cases chefs are eager to showcase healthy items and help in wellness efforts but remember their main job is to provide breakfast and lunch for your employees with choices that employees like to eat.  What you want to do is establish a positive working relationship where you meet monthly or quarterly so that all food service topics can be discussed –vending machine choices, food for office meetings as well as cafeteria options. Some of these issues require corporate policy decisions but if you have a positive working relationship with your food service vendor, you are heading in the right direction in establishing a corporate culture of health.