London Borough of Croydon

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Eat Well Croydon

About Eat Well Croydon

Eat Well Croydon is a voluntary scheme for food outlets in Croydon encouraging them to develop healthier practices. Making small changes in food choices, preparation and cooking methods can make a big difference to customers' diet and health and overall customer satisfaction.

To date (June 2015), twenty local food businesses have signed up to the scheme and achieved the Eat Well Croydon award for demonstrating a commitment to offering healthier options.

The scheme is also part of Croydon's Food Flagship Borough programme, which will use food to transform our environment, improve health, tackle obesity and reduce health inequalities in the borough

Eating out

With around 48% of Londoners[1] eating a takeaway at least once a week, and 11% of men in both the 25-34 and 45-54 age groups eating out twice a day, food consumed out of the home plays an important part in the health of the population. Research amongst children who eat from shops surrounding secondary schools (school fringe) found that 80% of pupils eat from the school fringe at least once a week and this increases to 97% among those who were allowed out at lunchtime. Food consumed outside of the home tends to be higher in saturated fats and salt than food eaten at home. A diet high in saturated fats and salt is linked to cardiovascular disease and obesity[2].

[1] YouGov 2010 Capital Cuisine survey

[2] Sinclair S. and Winkler J.T. 2008. The School Fringe: What pupils buy and eat from shops surrounding secondary schools, Nutrition Policy Unit, London Metropolitan University

Project scope

The Eat Well project is led by the council's public health team, in partnership with the food safety team.

The project aims to support local businesses operating in Croydon to sign-up to the voluntary scheme which allows food businesses to achieve an award if they can demonstrate a commitment of offering healthier options.

The project also aims to publicly recognise caterers who are seen to be:

  • Committed to promoting good health by providing a range of foods that meet customer demands for healthier choices.
  • Committed to providing a good standards of hygiene and achieved a rating of three or above in the Food Standards Agencies Food Hygiene Rating Scheme.

Objectives

  • To adopt an Eat Well Croydon 'healthier catering award' (affiliated to Croydon Heart Town) and sign-up food businesses to the voluntary code.
  • To encourage caterers to make healthy eating easy and accessible for their customers by providing and promoting healthy food within their establishments.
  • To provide recognition to our catering businesses who have integrated healthy eating as a key consideration within menu provision and day-to-day practice.
  • To increase consumer demand for healthier options when eating out of the home.

More information

To find out more about EatWell Croydon and how your business can take part in the scheme, please contact Deborah Norman, project manager at: deborah@diethealth.co.uk