Sodexo launches Healthy Futures Partnership with the British Nutrition Foundation
Sodexo has announced an exciting new partnership with the British Nutrition Foundation to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people.
The Healthy Futures Partnership was formed following research conducted by Sodexo in partnership with Business in the Community (BiTC), which identified that health and wellbeing, specifically nutrition education for children and young people, is a priority for Sodexo’s schools and universities clients.
The British Nutrition Foundation is a public-facing charity which exists to give people, educators and organisations access to reliable information on nutrition. Grounded in science, the British Nutrition Foundation supports individuals and organisations on their journey towards adopting a healthy and sustainable diet.
The British Nutrition Foundation, with 30 years of expertise and leadership in nutrition education, will collaborate with Sodexo to deliver an approach, which aims to positively impact some 250,000 children and young people across the 550 state and independent schools where Sodexo and its subsidiary, Alliance in Partnership, deliver school meals.
This will be delivered through an innovative and sustainable approach to menu design combined with a range of evidence-based nutrition education programmes, including the British Nutrition Foundation’s nutrition and health and wellbeing training for Sodexo’s frontline catering teams as a key part of their continuous professional development. In addition, valuable learning resources are being created to help our trained chefs and for teaching staff to use in the classroom to help children and young people learn and improve their understanding of nutrition, cooking, and food provenance.
Through this work, Sodexo aims to improve the health and wellbeing of the people they serve by providing valuable educational resources to help encourage children and young people to adopt a healthy lifestyle and to encourage their families to do so too.
Sodexo is delighted to partner with the British Nutrition Foundation. As a major provider of education catering services in the UK, we have a huge responsibility to educate the children and young people we cater for.
This generation, after all, is the first to have never known a life without unlimited access to people or information through social media, so we want to ensure they can access trusted advice to make informed decisions about their nutrition. The more we can educate students about their food choices, the more likely we will influence their performance whilst learning, their behaviours and their health and wellbeing into adulthood.
Ultimately, nutrition education delivered through a collaborative approach founded on shared expertise is key to our story and very much aligned with the recommendations from the National Food Strategy that include the importance of nutrition education.
Fundamental to the Partnership is measuring the progress of the initiative. To ensure that it delivers the difference it seeks to make in the community, the British Nutrition Foundation will independently monitor and report on its impact through evaluation and feedback from staff, pupils, and teachers.
It is important for all children and young people to receive good education on food, nutrition and health so that they are equipped with the necessary skills to make healthy choices and to eat well now and in the future. We welcome the opportunity to work with Sodexo as part of the Healthy Futures Partnership to help them make a meaningful difference to the health and wellbeing of the young people they serve, as well as to support the staff involved to deliver food education in schools through training and resources.