Fighting Obesity through Offer and Demand

Nov 06, 2018
Florence DEVILLERS

The European FOOD programme (Fighting Obesity through Offer and Demand) uses an original approach to promote balanced nutrition. Through a double objective:

  • To improve the nutritional habits of employees by raising their awareness of health issues
  • To improve the nutritional quality of the food on offer in restaurants

Today, 10 Member States are involved in this EU programme, coordinated by Edenred. The programme uses a methodology in 5 steps:

  • Needs assessment
  • Recommendations for employees (e.g. taste the food before adding salt) and for restaurants (e.g. favour cooking methods that do not require adding too much fat)
  • Communication campaigns
  • Evaluation (by mystery visits in restaurants and qualitative questionnaire)
  • Adaptation and dissemination

Since 2009, the FOOD programme reached 4.2 million employees, 200.000 companies and 475.000 restaurants.

In France, almost 80% of the employees declared to take a break for lunch during working days in 2016. A good nutritional quality is an important or very important criteria for 72% of the employees to choose a restaurant. This figure is slightly inferior to the European average in 2016, which was of 77%.

From the restaurants side, in 2016, 49% of them declared that they had a medium knowledge about balanced nutrition and could learn some more. They are 40% to declare that they had a high level of knowledge on the topic, this figure increasing (about 20% in 2012).

We are now waiting for the publication of the 2018 barometer’s results, coming soon!

To have more information, visit the website of the FOOD programme.