What's Cooking At The Office?

Serving nutritious food

Consider a normal day at your workplace: everybody has assignments and tasks to complete. Time is running out and deadlines are looming. What’s easier than a quick bite? And the most available and pocket-friendly bites often turn out to be unhealthy. So, here we are with some guidelines for promoting proper nutritional practices and awareness at your workplace. Be it a meeting or a work event, if your workplace has vending machines, cafeteria or food court, consider setting up nutrition standards by providing good healthy options: seed mix, roasted makhana, bhuna chana etc. That’s the first step.

Get creative

Try new foods together: varied toppings—say, all-fruit jams, almond butter roasted red pepper, hummus— with whole wheat bases. For a special treat, one can include oatmeal with an assortment of toppings, like, sliced bananas, fresh berries, ground flax seeds, and walnuts even seed mixes. During lunch meetings, power up your employees with sandwiches and healthy wraps filled with vegetables, salads containing beans and grains or fresh fruit. Desserts can be also made healthy. For example, chocolate brownies made without dairy, eggs, or sugar. Or fruit custard without sugar, substituting with fruit sweetness or jiggery.

Fix up the office kitchen

Outfit your office kitchen with good quality knives for cutting fresh fruits and vegetables (in case employees bring those) and a high-speed blenders for whipping up nutrient-dense smoothies and dips, to serve at meetings and other work events or even during normal working days.

Get nutrition experts for staff

At a time when everyone is giving nutrition advice and conflicting information is constantly being shared about the latest “it” foods or “miracle” diets, it is better to call on a qualified doctor, dietitian or nutritionist for guiding sessions on nutrition topics and health conditions: type 2 diabetes to cancer prevention. Conduct half-yearly or annual full health checkup for employees to set a baseline for healthy living. This will also make them aware of any underlying problems and how to combat them.

Try a corporate cooking class

They are becoming trendy in organisations the world over, with onsite lessons, classes or discounts thrown in. Research shows that the team that eats together, works better together. In a competitive world, where a productive team is essential, the road ahead can be as simple as a corporate cooking class. They bring in greater group interaction, team cohesion, airing of problems, discussion of solutions.

Mind the message

Don’t go overboard with messaging. Providing too much information can overwhelm employees. Send in monthly or weekly updates, so that they get the time to mull over those and choose a better food regimen as per their body needs. Keep in mind your main goal: keeping your employees informed so that they can tell fact from fiction about healthy eating and raising helpful and credible guidance. Also, it would be great to direct them where they can go for proper advice on matters of healthy nutrition.