Five restaurant chains join FSA healthy eating drive

A number of leading high-street restaurant chains have become the latest catering operators to sign up to the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) drive to providing healthier meals outside the home.

PizzaExpress, Pizza Hut, Domino's, The Restaurant Group and Tragus have all agreed to provide commitments, which will focus on the range of healthier options available to their customers.

They join the contract caterers, pubs, fast food chains, coffee shop chains and sandwich shops that have already signed up to the FSA scheme.

Some of the commitments announced by the restaurant chains today include:

• Salt reduction projects: This work includes finding ways to use less salt in pizza dough and training hundreds of chefs not to use salt in food preparation.
• Extensive work to collect full nutritional data for products and recipes: This data will then be used to help recipe reformulation and to provide more customer information
• Reviewing children's menus to make them healthier: Including using more 'hidden' vegetables in dishes and offering more fruit
• Working with suppliers to identify core products lower in saturated fat: For example to identify a lower-fat mozzarella cheese as a pizza topping or using lower fat dressings and milk
• Increasing the range of healthier options on offer: Including more salads, soups, fish dishes, grilled foods and desserts with more fruit.

Four café chains – Camden Food Co, John Lewis Partnership Cafés, Sainsbury's Cafés and Upper Crust – will be the next to publish commitments.

Rosemary Hignett, head of nutrition at the FSA, said: “We now have more than 40 companies working with the Agency to ensure their customers can make healthier choices if they want to.

“We estimate this could benefit around eight million customers every day, which is clearly a significant achievement. We welcome all of the efforts being taken by these companies to help us all enjoy healthier diets.”

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Pub chains join FSA healthy eating drive >>

Seven coffee and sandwich shop chains join FSA healthy meal drive >>

By Daniel Thomas

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