Energy firm Centrica has been awarded regionally for their healthy catering practices in partnership with its hospitality services provider BaxterStorey. The Healthy Eating Awards encourage food businesses to provide healthier options to customers through the use of healthier catering practices, increasing fruit, vegetables, wholegrain carbohydrates and reducing saturated fat, sugar and salt.
Following rigorous assessments of the menus, cooking methods, ingredients used and marketing, Centrica’s England sites achieved the Gold accreditation for the Eat Out Eat Well Award from Trading Standards. Sites in Scotland achieve the Healthy Living Award from NHS Scotland. Their Cardiff site was awarded Gold for the Healthy Options award and Bord Gais in Dublin, Ireland received a Bronze Happy Heart at Work award from the Irish Heart Foundation, which is provided by Trading Standards for Buckinghamshire and Surrey.
BaxterStorey introduced its Healthy Me food concept across locations to provide staff with food choices that are wholesome, balanced and nutritious. Award assessors praised BaxterStorey for its innovation in menu creation and marketing of the Healthy Me initiative, which incorporates more plant based protein, provides nutritional information and healthier snack choices including the fruity oat bar with no added sugar, and freshly prepared juices and smoothies served in 150ml bottles, in line with new Government guidelines.
As well as grilling, baking and steaming food where possible, BaxterStorey chefs were praised for increasing the number of oily fish dishes and reducing the amount of red meat dishes available, introducing healthier and more sustainable food alternatives to popular dishes such as poached fish with a new potato salad and green beans on ‘Fish Fridays’.
Rosie Cadogan (pictured), BaxterStorey Nutritionist for Centrica, explained, “Healthy food is essential to a productive workplace and providing staff with these options is becoming increasingly important to our clients. Healthy eating is about education and choice, which is exactly what our Healthy Me initiative is all about.
“Achieving the ‘Eat Out, Eat Well’ award is a great recognition of how we are making healthy eating more accessible and exciting. From guidance on nutrition and healthy food swaps to recipes to try at home, our chef development team’s work hard to ensure our food is fresh, seasonal, of good provenance and interesting to keep customers engaged.”
