The food business produces over 180.9m meals a year and it has carried out an initial reformulation programme with its team of registered nutritionists and culinary directors. This programme has been successful resulting in more than 90% of its recipes now containing low to medium amounts of sugar and salt.
Compass, which feeds people from children through to adults and the elderly, has enhanced many of its healthy eating programmes to meet the varying nutritional needs of its customers. Over the past few years Compass has reduced sugar by 30% across their school menu cycles to date, exceeding the Government’s target of 20%.
This has been achieved through careful recipe reformulation and recipe creation. For example, its fruity picnic bar contains 66% fruit including apple, bananas & raisins and its brownies contain beetroot, carrot & sweet potato.
In its Business and Industry sector, which feeds thousands of the country’s workers every day, Compass has switched 80% of its starchy carbohydrates into wholemeal varieties (up from 11% in 2020). Around 62% of its recipes now contain one of your five a day (an increase from 41% in 2020).
Nicky Martin, director of nutrition and wellbeing at Compass Group UK & Ireland said: “As the UK’s largest food and support services provider, serving over 180.9m meals a year, it is our responsibility to ensure that all our customers – from children through to the elderly, as well as our own people, have access to healthy and nutritious meals. I am delighted by our progress to date.
“We have achieved a huge amount through menu reformulation, but it’s also important to continue providing our customers, clients, and employees with information on the food that they eat and provide access to nutritional information and wellness. I am looking forward to expanding our health and wellbeing strategy, which will see us take our menus above and beyond our existing healthy meal options.”
Compass has now set itself further targets which will see less than 10% of its dishes being high in saturated fat, and less than 5% of its dishes being high in salt by 2030.