Five more high street restaurant and takeaway chains yesterday signed up to the Food Standard Agency’s healthy eating commitment.
PizzaExpress, Pizza Hut, The Restaurant Group, the operator of Frankie & Benny’s, Chiquito and Garfunkel’s, and Café Rouge operator Tragus along with Domino’s Pizza pledged to help customers enjoy a healthier, balanced diet through menu planning, better kitchen practice and providing consumer information.
They join Burger King, KFC, McDonald’s, Nando’s, Subway and Wimpy which signed all up to the FSA agreement in November last year.
Some of the measures the restaurant chains will now undertake include reducing salt levels in food, in particular pizza dough, using lower-fat ingredients such as lower-fat mozzarella, increasing the range of healthier options on offer, and provide accurate nutritional data of dishes for consumers. Pizza Hut will also be conducting a calorie labeling system on its menus over the summer.
Dawn Primarolo, Minister for Public Health, said: “Tastes are changing and people want to eat more healthily. These commitments will help people make healthier choices and will go some way towards our aim to make healthy food the norm.”
Foodservice analyst Peter Backman, managing director of Horizons, added: “The fact that some of the UK’s biggest restaurant chains - PizzaExpress, Pizza Hut, The Restaurant Group, Tragus and Domino’s - have all agreed to commit to providing a range of healthier options on their menus shows the seriousness with which the foodservice industry now has to view healthy eating.
“For many years it was argued that it was the consumer’s right to eat whatever they liked when they were out, but as eating out has moved from being an occasional treat to something that most people do several times a month, so its contribution to the health of the nation becomes more vital.”
