Working with catering businesses for healthier choices

We are working with catering and restaurant businesses to help consumers make healthier choices when eating out. We are encouraging companies to reduce the amount of salt and saturated fat in their dishes to help consumers maintain energy balance (not consuming more calories than needed) and to make nutritional information more accessible available.

The types of action we are promoting include reformulating dishes to reduce the amounts of saturated fat, salt and sugar; menu planning to introduce a wider range of healthier options and the use of healthier cooking methods.

We are working to encourage:

• high street restaurants, pubs, coffee and sandwich chains to commit to making changes to enable people to eat more healthily outside the home – the commitments are both voluntary and public
• workplace catering businesses to commit to activities that will help their customers to make healthier choices, because around three million meals are eaten at work every day
• major employers to ensure their staff are offered healthier food options at work

We are also working to develop a voluntary system of nutrition information (calorie labelling) in a range of businesses and catering outlets which will help consumers make informed choices when eating out.

Our catering strategy supports our work with food retailers and manufacturers to encourage similar commitments and as the strategy develops we intend to work with businesses in other sectors of the food service and catering industry – to build on the good work that has already been carried out by some of these companies.

The nutrition information work also links into the Department of Health's cross-Government obesity strategy 'Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives'. More information can be found at the link below.

The Agency launched the first phase of activity aimed at introducing nutrition information in a range of catering outlets to provide consumers with more consistent information when they are eating out. The first step will be the introduction of calorie labelling. More information can be found at the link below.