NHS Ayrshire and Arran Score 10 out of 10 with Major Healthy Eating Award
Staff and visitors to an amazing 10 NHS hospital sites throughout Ayrshire and Arran can now eat more healthily as all of these hospital sites have now successfully achieved the healthyliving award.
The sites that have gained the award comprise all the catered NHS Ayrshire and Arran hospitals from Arran to Kilmarnock and beyond. This achievement is all the more impressive as this is the first NHS Board to get all of its catered sites through the healthyliving award.
Catering staff in all of the sites have been working extremely hard over the past few months to change the way in which they prepare the food that they serve to staff and visitors at the hospitals. This involves making sure that more healthy options are served and that the sugar, fat and salt content of the healthy choice dishes are all reduced.
The healthyliving award is managed by the Scottish Consumer Council and is linked to the Scottish Executive’s national healthyliving campaign that uses the recognisable apple symbol within the logo. This is intended to be as prestigious an accreditation as Taste of Scotland and Les Routiers, with the distinct difference that it will be the sign of healthier eating out.
The healthyliving award is open to most food serving outlets in Scotland, but specifically places where people go to buy food regularly, such as workplace restaurants, cafés, sandwich shops, further education sites, hospital canteens, and restaurants.
Response to the award by caterers throughout Scotland has been exceptional, with more than 511 eating establishments of all types across the country signed up to the award, and more coming on board each day .
Two individuals from NHS Ayrshire and Arran were responsible for encouraging the sites through the award; Janice Gillan, Catering Manager and Lesley Morris, Hotel Services Manager, both were interested in applying for the award to ensure that they continued to provide healthy and nutritious food to the staff and visitors on their sites.
Lesley said “Having held a previous Scottish Healthy Choices Award we wanted to maintain and improve on the choices we were able to offer our customers and help them to make informed choices about the food they eat in our restaurants. We have been trying out different ranges with great results and we have been delighted with the responses we have received particularly to our healthier desserts which are proving to be very popular indeed.”
She added, “We reviewed our menus to take account of the healthyliving award criteria. We had made a lot of changes to our menus, purchasing and cooking methods in the past, but we needed to review what we were doing to ensure that we had taken account of the new award criteria in each area of our menus and sales choices.”
Janice Gillan added that , “Staff at all sites are now very much more aware of healthy eating and of making healthier choices, we also find that our staff can provide a lot of help and information about the content of foods to the customers.” .
Both Janice and Lesley were keen to stress how delighted they were to have achieved the healthyliving award; “The award means a great deal to the catering staff as they are proud of the food they serve and are always happy to assist customers on making the right choices, and to promote our healthyliving choices and sales offers.”
A survey, commissioned by the Scottish Consumer Council also confirms the outcomes of the NHS Ayrshire and Arran experience as it revealed that 94% agreed it was important healthier options were available to people who eat out, 88% believe that healthy fare can taste as good as less healthy options and 42% said they would buy food from an eating establishment more often if healthier choices were available.
Claire Brown, Project Manager of the healthyliving award, said: “We are absolutely delighted for the staff at NHS Ayrshire and Arran and in particular for this fantastic achievement of getting all of their catered sites through the healthyliving award, it is a pleasure to give them the recognition they deserve.”
“Consumers are increasingly on the look out for healthier options when they eat out as awareness of the need to eat more healthily grows. With establishments like the hospitals in Ayrshire and Arran actively promoting healthier choices and supporting this with additional information for customers we hope that more and more people will choose to eat more healthily.”
The accreditation takes a wide ranging approach to encourage caterers to adopt healthier practices across the board, and will be actively promoted to consumers to help them access healthier options.
To qualify for the healthyliving award, caterers need to meet a set of key criteria, which includes a commitment to providing and supporting healthier eating, as demonstrated on the menu selection, the way they prepare food, marketing and promotional activities and the way in which food is presented and sold.
At least half of the food they serve will need to be a healthyliving choice, prepared using both healthier ingredients and healthier cooking methods, and healthy and nutritious food is required to be available for children in places where they are served.
For further information on the healthyliving award, please contact 0141 226 5261 or visit www.healthylivingaward.co.uk
