Promoting healthy choices
Promoting healthy choices in the workplace is vital
to ensuring the health of your employees as well as
the health of your business.
Those with a poor diet risk becoming susceptible to
a host of illnesses and ailments and, as well as overeating,
failure to eat can have a negative impact
on personal health and productivity. 
Research has
found that eating breakfast aids short-term memory
and information processing capacity. Those who skip
breakfast are unlikely to make up missed nutrients
during the rest of the day.
The UK Government's '8 tips for eating well' provide
a set of guidelines for achieving a healthy diet (or
simply improving one's diet) that is applicable to all
healthy adults.
These are:
- Base your meals on starchy foods
- Eat lots of fruit and veg
- Eat more fish
- Cut down on saturated fat and sugar
- Eat less salt
- Get active and be a healthy weight
- Don't get thirsty
- Don't skip breakfast
Employers can use these tips to help them plan
Healthy Eating projects – along with the results
of their own needs analysis – by considering what
changes they can make to staff restaurants, vending
machines and boardroom lunches for example, that
will help their employees to follow these tips.
Beyond providing the
body with essential
nutrients, healthy
eating is an activity
which can promote
employee mental
wellbeing by enabling
them to take time out
to relax and socialise
with colleagues.
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