Workplace Health and Wellbeing: Eat Well
Workplace Health and Wellbeing: Eat Well
Healthy Eating plays an important role in the prevention of chronic disease, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer as well as maintaining a healthy weight. Consuming a healthy and balanced diet can also influence an individual’s work performance.
The Department of Health (2018) have found that forty nice percent of the Australian working population have an inadequate intake of fruit and vegetables. The days of donut Fridays, eating at desks and vending machines in the lunchroom is slowly been phased out and replaced with communal fruit bowls, fresh rolls and sandwiches in meetings and filtered water fountains and drink bottles for staff.
It’s one thing to take these steps to encourage staff healthy eating but it is another to address cultural practices and any ‘Do as I say not as I do’ habits posed by higher management. For a workplace program to be successful it needs to be communicated without an eyeroll or a tone of disdain.
We’ve all heard of the saying ‘you are what you eat’, this is extremely relevant in the workplace. What your employees eat, fuels and powers their day in the office. If you want your employees to feel energized, focused and productive, you’ll want them eating a notorious, balanced diet that supplies the nourishment their bodies and brains need to succeed.
Inspiring staff to eat well can also influence workplace relationships, office morale, productivity levels and employee health.
Workplace programs can address healthy eating by implementing a workplace nutrition policy and providing access to and improving availability of healthy food choices at work.
‘Lunch n Learn’ opportunities have also grown in popularity within the workplace. Inviting staff to attend a seminar or workshop lead by a dietician or nutritionist will allow them to learn new information as well as enjoy healthy snacks that you provided. This is something that can be implemented biannually, whereas providing staff with fresh fruit and water, displaying flyers and information brochures and most importantly, those in management positions leading by example are all everyday measures that can be taken.
