Public sector caterers are often accused of working in silos, but if there are two things that are guaranteed to bring people together, it’s fine food and a shared challenge.
In December, Cost Sector Catering once again enjoyed the hospitality of chef Mark Hill at the House of Commons, the host for a meal celebrating the naming of the Top 20 most influential people in public sector catering.
Seating these people for a roundtable discussion on the current challenges they face, it was striking not only how they are all working hard to address many of the same issues, but also how innovative solutions in one sector can also present an opportunity for another.
Kicking the conversation off, editor David Foad asked for opinions on the Child Obesity Plan that came out in August. Linda Cregan, chief executive of the Children’s Food Trust, felt there were good things in the plan that caterers needed to grab hold of, including childhood obesity’s links not just to diet but also to activity, mental health and general well-being.
But she was concerned that the same discussions had been ongoing for the best part of a decade and action wasn’t happening fast enough.
Former national director of the School Food Plan Myles Bremner was encouraged by moves to cut 20% of sugar from the nation’s diets by 2020, but he was looking to caterers and not just food manufacturers to make it happen.
He said: “The challenge comes with the role for all of us in the public sector and the huge amount of meals we provide, that, alongside that voluntary reduction of 20%, we can also ensure that our normal supply of food within the public sector is good and healthy.”
Chair of the PS100 Group Andy Jones agreed, saying: “It’s us as caterers; we have got to push the suppliers but also look at our recipes and what we do.
“We can start weaning people off sugar – it’s about education – but I think we’re the only group that has got the health of the nation in our hands.
“If must come together and collectively say ‘we are going to start reducing sugar and not selling certain items’, and send that message to the suppliers – work with them. If we become ‘sugar smart’ as an industry, we can hit that 20% target and beat it by 2020.”
Paul Howell, head of commercial at hospital and care sector food supplier Anglia Crown, and Ian Stone, managing director at meals on wheels supplier and operator Apetito, agreed the industry would step up to make the changes required, but they warned that the pace of change would be dictated by the palates of their customers.
Speaking as a parent, Stone said he was concerned about the marketing of sweetened cereal products to children and the influence of pester power.
Julie Barker, director of The University Caterers Organisation (TUCO) emphasised the need to educate people, citing work TUCO had done with the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation that had revealed the lack of awareness people had of the amounts of sugar in products.
Alistair McIntyre, chair of ASSIST (the Association of Service Solutions in Scotland) and Geoff Booth, chair of PACE (Professional Association of Catering Education) agreed that children had to be taught to make the right choices themselves.
Booth warned that the catering education curriculum was ‘a competitive environment’ with little room for common sense messages about lifestyle choices or the dangers of some foods.
Matthew White, chair of TUCO, talked about the positive actions caterers could take to nudge people towards the right choices, saying “the power is in our hands”.
Describing trials at some universities, he said: “This isn’t about becoming the police of sugar, this is about putting things out of people’s immediate reach; for example, by frosting glass-fronted fridges to only allow customers to see water.
“For us, it’s a win-win operation because the gross profit on a bottle of water is a lot better than it is on a bottle of coke. That’s a very powerful way of us changing and helping people make those changes, and having the power to do so.”
Cregan added: “I don’t think we should forget the power that we do have in the public sector and the purchasing power we have.”
She talked about how caterers and their suppliers had been able to adapt within a matter of weeks when the school food standards came in, saying: “When we ask for things, change can happen quite quickly and the manufacturers do respond. If we work with industry and talk to them about what we want, why we want it and how we want it, they will do it.”
Cregan also talked about initiatives happening with preschool children. She said: “Voluntary standards in early-years settings have been much more welcomed than they ever were in schools, and they’re being adapted and implemented alongside things like cookery courses for parents.
“Most local authorities around the country have our Eat Better, Start Better course, which is [centred on] nutrition and what’s being served in nurseries, but also working with that lost generation of young parents who didn’t learn those skills at school of how to menu plan, how to cook, how to prepare food from scratch, and therefore have no option but to rely on fast foods and ready meals.
“Early years are a critical part of what we’re doing; not just educating the children, but it’s also a key time to capture parents as well.”
Jo Ralling, director of the Sugar Smart Campaign, said that those in their teens and early 20s would soon become the parents of tomorrow and it was crucial to educate them to avoid another lost generation with low awareness of dietary issues.
Several in the group agreed it was important to try to instil a love of cooking in these young adults and felt skills should be taught right through secondary schools.
White described the efforts some universities were making to encourage food skills for university freshers through a range of initiatives like creating spaces for dinner parties or food markets on campus.
For hard working students, it served as a diversion but was also, he said, “a huge life skill to take away, and I think universities are very open to using critical time during people’s education to get those skills”.
Barker described a partnership at Brighton University where caterers were alerted by the local Co-Op of what was in each week’s veg-box delivery. They would devise recipes and offer the students classes to cook the vegetables.
Chair of LACA Sally Shadrack pointed out that taster sessions for parents were already being held by some school caterers, saying they presented an opportunity to bring parents in for cookery classes.
But she mentioned her concerns about a trend among head teachers to request the removal of traditional desserts from the menus and how that might impact some children who weren’t being fed at home in the evening.
As the conversation heated up and shifted to the issue of malnutrition, more examples were shared of innovation and best practice that could be replicated throughout the sector.
Andy Jones suggested bringing cookery lessons to food banks, pointing out that malnutrition and obesity were both linked to poverty, and that it could be within the public sector’s remit to take action.
Neel Radia, Chair of the National Association of Care Catering (NACC) described the impact of the cuts to meals on wheels services that are spreading across local authorities, saying: “It’s a staggering drop, mainly due to social care funding cuts. However, we have found that where health and social care budgets have integrated, they’ve reinstated the services because they see it as beneficial and preventative.”
Describing the stumbling blocks that local authorities encountered when considering continued funding of meals on wheels, Radia said it was often people’s inability to think creatively.
“The NACC is sharing innovative case studies of meals on wheels services run as social enterprises, or where they have been combined with schools’ catering operations, to highlight what can be achieved with reduced funding.
“But,” he added, “We’ve now got malnutrition in the community happening. We can’t wait five years for social care to tip over and more people to die in their own homes; we need to do something about it now.”
The room agreed that the shift to integrating health and social care budgets was common sense and needed to happen quickly. Stone said Apetito’s meals on wheels business had been reduced in size by 50%, and suggested that care home and domiciliary care services were on the brink of collapse.
Radia said that the lack of a statutory duty to provide food to older people, coupled with low awareness of the link between nutrition and well-being needed to be challenged.
Barker described what she saw as a fundamental problem: “We’re all working in silos. Funding is being cut dramatically, so we’ve got an issue of capacity. They don’t have any space to think innovatively about other ways of operating and it’s up to us sitting around this table [to do something about it].”
Caroline Lecko, Patient Safety Lead at NHS England said the NHS was also close to collapse.
Sounding a note of caution, she said: “There is no more money; there will be more cuts next year, and the year after will be even worse. If you want to engage with these people on malnutrition and dehydration, you have got to change your language, because they haven't taken any notice of anything anybody around this table has said for the past ten years.
“If you want to impact people now, you must demonstrate that you are assisting the NHS; that the services you provide are keeping people out of hospital and driving down the demand on the system.”
Chair of the Holiday Hunger Taskforce Lindsay Graham said: “As an ex-community nurse, I’m totally behind meals on wheels.” And she shared an example of innovation from Dundee, saying: “It’s in the top-ten cities for issues around poverty and deprivation for children, and this summer they ran a holiday meals scheme, and from 41 sites in the city they fed 19,000 meals to hungry children.
“It was meals on wheels that helped with that food provision, so it was the two sectors working together that helped with the capacity issue we mentioned.”
She called for research that would show a return on investment for every pound that was spent on meals for the malnourished, and added: “With the double burden that we’ve got of malnutrition and obesity, there’s an opportunity there for the sector to work together to say ‘look, we’re here throughout the whole life cycle’, and how can all these wonderful skills that the industry has with trained people and equipped premises do more to help each other with models of good practice?
“That’s about how we as an industry get smarter about telling those stories to the people that need to hear them.”
Radia had a similar example of collaboration, mentioning a hospital with a small kitchen that was going to be closed but had now instead begun to run meals on wheels from the site.
“There is no money and we all need to start looking more commercially at the opportunities to work together and bring down the cost so it’s a win-win for everyone.”
Ian Stone described a programme in London that was bringing a meals on wheels provider together with the housing sector via a homeless hostel, and using their kitchens at lunchtime.
“There are huge opportunities to re-engineer things like this,” he said.
Rich Watts, senior Catering Mark manager at the Soil Association said: “It’s been really refreshing to see the heads of organisations coming together to address these issues, sharing expertise, knowledge, capacity and just general emotional support.”
And Myles Bremner added: “Around the table, the public sector catering representatives cover the whole life course. We’re hearing examples of creative, innovative solutions and it’s about the story-telling to politicians; it’s not a double burden, there’s one solution and we have the ability and the opportunity for the whole public sector to speak with a very clear voice
“That message is that we do normal food, but the provision and the way we deliver it creates good outcomes.”
Alistair McIntyre agreed: “There is capacity there. Between us, I think by looking at the resources there are definite positive ways forward to work together to attack malnutrition in the right way.”
Phil Shelley, chair of the Hospital Caterer’s Association (HCA) concluded the conversation on an optimistic note, saying, “There are some fantastic examples that are going on right now.
“I think we have to be careful not to focus on the frustration but rather on the inspiration, and it may be small steps but we build on that, and we focus on where we want to be, rather than where we wish we were.”