San Francisco has passed a law barring fast-food restaurants from giving away toys with children’s meals that do not meet nutritional guidelines.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11723738

The new law also requires that fast food restaurants also limit the saturated and trans fat in the food that served, nad most important fruit or vegetables need to accompany the meal. What do you think,  are we doing enough in UK to help parents and children make choices that are good for them?

Adding calories to your menu can seem like a chore but it does bring competitive advantage, consumers like this level of respect and do make different food choices.

The UK Comprehensive Spending Review and Wellbeing

Economic growth and reform are at the at the heart of the spending review and this means services to the public being provided in an efficient way, often through public and private sector collaboration.

During the past six years Nutrition and Wellbeing has developed successful working relationships with public sector organisations such as the School Food Trust and the Food Standards Agency (now part of the Department of Health).  We have also collaborated closely with many local NHS Trusts and PCTs. One of our key aims has been to help or clients deliver efficient and effective service to the public. We feel that a great example of this approach is the Tower Hamlets – Diabetes Day-to-Day project.

Diabetes Day-to-Day Project

Launched on January 5th 2009, the Diabetes Day-to-Day project contacted all people with diabetes in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and offered them educational self-management courses to help them cope better with Diabetes. More than 6,000 of the 11,000 affected by Diabetes signed up.

This pioneering project made huge progress in dealing with the problem of getting people to engage with the health training courses that allow them better manage and take control of their diabetes.

Our project won the prestigious, Adopt, Adapt and Improve, Health and Social Care Award NHS London 2009, as recognition of the innovation and significant impact of this programme.

Diabetes is recognised as one of the NHS’s long-term conditions (LTCs) and it is essential that all people who have the condition really understand it and manage it so that they can maintain their health. Nutrition and Wellbeing managed the nutrition input into the Diabetes Day-to-Day project programme using a version of Xpert adapted for the Tower Hamlets population. This was no small challenge as it required the management of a huge team of dietitians and health trainers across 30+ sites delivering thousands of education sessions over the three month span of the project.  The project would have been challenged to be done within the normal auspices of the PCT because of the budgets and expertise needed. Nutrition and Wellbeing were able to meet these challenges and deliver a great project that met budgets and delivered expected targets.

Nutrition and Wellbeing looks forward to continuing to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of the British public’s wellbeing and we welcome the Government’s comprehensive spending review approach to public / private sector partnership.

There is too much salt and fat in the food served to children in hospital, a survey suggests. Research from Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) found 85 of the 189 child hospital meals tested would be too unhealthy to be served in schools. In other words 55% of meals had an acceptable level of salt and 45% had an unacceptable level of salt. While I believe that nutrition guidelines are important for hospitals, its very important that we recognise that children who are in hospital are unwell and may have a reduced apetite. So we don’t know what the children were actually eating. The message is to take care with our most vulnerable members of society to view the whole picture.
For the full article: http://bbc.in/dBpR98

The Dairy Council conference, 5th October, was a great update on Milk in Action. For more information visit the Dairy Council website http://www.milk.co.uk/.

Nutrition and Wellbeing provide a Calories on the menu service for small and medium size businesses http://www.nutritionandwe…http://lnkd.in/fRXwGU

The School Food Trust and Nutrition &Wellbeing are running School Food: Supporting caterers http://www.nutritionandwellbeing.co.uk

Nutrition and Wellbeing will be running jointly badged courses with the School Food Trust in October and November 2010 – watch this space.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS WORK. http://bit.ly/9fPfLJ

Calories on menu? Sign up for course info http://www.nutritionandwellbeing.co.uk/newsletter-for-professionals-interested-in-courses/