Pubs sign up to healthy eating

Thursday 5 February 2009

Six of the UK's leading pub restaurant companies have today announced a commitment to join a growing number of catering companies who are working with the Agency to help people eat more healthily outside the home.

These commitments cover some of the country's best known pub chains - JD Wetherspoon PLC, Greene King and Marston's Inns & Taverns - and pubs run by Mitchells & Butlers, the Spirit Group and Whitbread. These include famous names such as Harvester, Chef & Brewer and Beefeater. The companies involved serve more than a million meals a day between them.

The pub companies have made an ongoing commitment to support the Agency's efforts to reduce salt and saturated fat intakes, and wider Government work to tackle obesity by helping people to eat a balanced diet. The pubs have also described some specific projects they will be working on during 2009. Although these are different for each company, they share the aim of helping their customers make healthier choices. They include:

• Working with suppliers to reduce salt and saturated fat levels, and remove trans fats in best-selling products. In many cases, this includes committing to meeting Agency salt targets for core products.
• Bringing together new teams, and launching new projects to develop long-term plans for making their menus healthier.
• Launching training for kitchen and serving staff on nutrition and healthy cooking practices.
• Offering more menu choice - with new healthier options, a wider range of alternatives to chips, increasing the amount of vegetables served with meals, reducing the number of fried dishes on the menu, and even pricing healthy options below their other meals.
• Swapping sauces, dressings and frying oils for alternatives that are lower in saturated fat.
• Making nutritional information more readily available to customers - in some cases gathering information for the first time.

Each company has agreed to provide a six month update to the Agency on the progress of this work.

Rosemary Hignett, Head of Nutrition at the Food Standards Agency, said: 'Pubs have always been popular places for couples and families to eat out together. We're delighted that these pubs have decided to work alongside us, because it shows that caterers can make some really positive changes without taking the pleasure out of a special occasion. These new commitments build on a lot of good work that has been under way for some time, and we are sure that other pub restaurant chains will see what is happening and want to get involved too.'

The Agency warmly welcomes these actions, which build upon commitments secured last year from the UK’s leading workplace caterers and their suppliers. This activity is already resulting in positive changes to more than 1.6 million meals served in the workplace every day. In November last year, commitments were also published by six leading quick service restaurants, Burger King, McDonald's, KFC, Wimpy, Subway and Nandos, who between them serve around 3 million customers every day.

The Agency is already working closely with the country's largest family restaurant and coffee shop chains, to develop similar commitments, which will be announced in the first half of this year.

This works supports the Department of Health's cross-Government obesity strategy 'Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives'.