How to stop your lunch break damaging your health
Congratulations to Dr Jeff Bray and Professor Hartwell who recently published about FoodSMART Project at The Conversation
Eating out is bad for us. Studies have shown that food provided outside the home contains more calories and more fat, especially saturated fat. The trouble is, many of us are eating this food every day without really realising what’s in it.
In recent years great efforts have been taken to help us understand the composition of packaged food. The clear marking of allergens, ingredients lists and “traffic light” indicators on the front of packs show retail customers how much fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt are contained. However, there is an important gap in this admirable trend.
Those of us who eat our lunch in a workplace canteen find it a lot more difficult to access the kind of information that leads to informed choices. And canteens can play a critical role in terms of healthy eating. They are a captive, sometimes subsidised, setting that is often used to provide the main meal of the day. In effect, many of us are eating out five times a week without really acknowledging it.