Romania, the latest country to have joined the Consortium (in August 2018) hosted the event and took the opportunity to officially launch the Program in the country. A media event took place on December 6th where Romanian High Officials introduced the FOOD program. Romania is committed to act in favor of healthy eating promotion at the workplace and raise awareness on this topic thanks to a strong public private partnership.
Looking forward
The general meeting then carried on with the national updates and exchanges about the yearly actions conducted in the member countries as well as the future developments to ensure the continuity of the Program.
This year, the focus was put on the digitization of the communication and the FOOD Barometers' results dissemination to restaurants and employees in order to get more adherence to the Program.
The partners also discussed about the 10th anniversary of the FOOD project that will take place in 2019.
This meeting was a great success thanks to the partners’ contribution and involvement and the positive dynamic brought by the new partners and contact points.
The FOOD programme - Fighting Obesity through Offer and Demand - is a public private partnership launched in 2009, which seeks to tackle the problem of rising obesity in Europe. Launched as an experimental project in 6 countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Spain, and Sweden), it has since become a Program and has been extended to Slovakia, Portugal, Austria and recently Romania. Edenred is the coordinator of the FOOD Program and uses its unique Ticket Restaurant food voucher network to reach the target groups.
Its main objective is to raise awareness among employees and restaurant owners on the importance of a healthy and balanced diet, and to adapt supply to demand. Practical tools and resources have been created for this purpose.
As part of this program, European “barometers” are being organized each year to better understand and analyze societal changes and the needs of employees and restaurants. The latest FOOD Barometer was published in October 2018.