Italien

Following a consolidation of the results from the first survey of 2009 and the inventory, experts outlined a set of recommendations targeted at restaurants and employees.
The purpose of these recommendations was to offer tangible and practical advice to help both target groups adopt healthier nutritional habits.
Despite the intention of some partners to have only common European recommendations, each country decided to adapt the recommendations to its local cultural habits. Following further consultation on national level, the partners accepted six recommendations to employees and one to the restaurants.

Recommendations to the employees (2009)

• Taste the food before adding salt.
• Choose water to accompany your lunch.
• Pay attention to the portion you need, it can be larger or smaller.
• Eat at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
• As a dessert, choose a fresh fruit based option and sometimes as an alternative, a dairy product.
• Choose types of cooking that do not add too much fat (steaming, roasting, grilling, etc.).
• During breaks, avoid snacks that are fatty or rich in salt or sugar.
• Some days try and do without meat. The combination of legumes and cereals is a good alternative.

Recommendations to the restaurants (2009)

• Offer vegetables as side dish.
• Offer legumes and vegetables.
• Offer wholemeal bread at lunchtime.
• Use little salt in the dishes you offer, using spices preferentially.
• Offer dishes made with poultry or, if possible, white meat.
• Have fish as part of the meals offered.
• Prefer the use of olive oil.
• Offer dairy-based dessert (milk-based ice cream, yoghurt instead of sorbet), or fruit-based dessert.
• Preferentially offer olives and raw vegetables instead of crisps and pretzels.
• Favor steaming, grilling or oven-baking, avoiding excessive condiments.
• Offer natural or sparkling water if possible.

Recommendations to the employees

• Avoid salt, or use it in moderation, since many foods already contain it. In any case, use iodised salt (no more than a pinch or one single sachet)
• Drink water during lunch
• Pay attention to the portion size you need, and moderate consumption of processed and fatty meals
• Eat at least 5 portions of fruit and veg a day
• Have a fruit-based dessert, or alternatively, a yoghurt
• Use cooking methods that don’t require much in fats (oven cooking, steaming or grilling)
• Avoid snacks rich in saturated fats, salt or sugar
• An alternative to meat is a combination of legumes and cereals
• Lead a varied diet, and during the week eat fish and legumes at least three times, alternating the main protein source (meat, fish, eggs and cheeses)
• The balance is reached by maintaining a healthy lifestyle day in day out

Recommendations to the restaurants

• Make imaginative meals, varying the foods and even their colouring
• Offer legumes regularly
• Offer whole bread at the table
• Use little (iodised) salt in meals that also contain spices
• Alternate between animal proteins (red and white meat, dairy products and eggs)
• Offer fish-based meals regularly
• Use extra virgin olive oil
• Offer fruit-based desserts
• Offer raw vegetables and yoghurt rather than potato chips and savoury snacks
• Steam cook, instead of grilling or oven cooking, avoiding the excessive use of condiments
• Offer mineral water
• Increase the supply of seasonal fruit and veg

Criteria to respect in order to be part of the FOOD restaurants’ network

Following the creation of the FOOD recommendations for restaurants, a network of restaurants respecting a certain number of recommendations was created.
In Italy, restaurants have to apply 7 out of the 11 recommendations in order to be part of the FOOD restaurants network.

To see the map of the entire network of FOOD restaurants, click here

The communication campaign officially started in October 2009 with a ‘road show’ in the six participating countries. A double-decker bus customised with the FOOD colours drove through the main city of each of the six countries of the project phase. The journey started in Paris and then continued on to Brussels, Stockholm, Prague, and Milan ending in Madrid. These one-day stops enabled the partners to showcase the first tools created and to explain the project objectives and actions.

The fifth stop of the Road Show FOOD bus was in Milan, on October the 20th, 2009.
Communication tools for Employees and Restaurant owners had been especially prepared for the event: newsletter, meal voucher advertising, leaflet, flyer, website, pedometers and more.
The representative of the Instituto Nazionale di Ricerca per gli Alimenti e la Nutrizione (INRAN) supported the team with a much-appreciated demonstration that included videos describing the guidelines for a balanced nutrition.
Visitors were invited to calculate the number of calories in a dish and in a recipe, etc. Many journalists participated in the FOOD press conference.
On top of that, visitors could meet experts for an individual and personalised session.
Finally, visitors had the opportunity to try a 10kg vest, aiming at demonstrating the impact of excess weight on the body: a lasting experience for those who tried!

image du Roadshow

A second survey was conducted in 2010 to try and evaluate the first stage of the project and the success of the tools. At this point the project had achieved many of its targets. Nutritional recommendations had been formed in each country for both the restaurants and the employees and communication tools were created in each country and across the whole project. More than 100 communication initiatives were introduced and implemented in the 28 months duration of the project. Especially popular was the website that was visited more than 66,600 times between February 2009 and May 2011.
It was estimated that after 28 months, around four million employees and 195,000 restaurants had been reached by the messages of the project.

The evaluators pointed out to several difficulties encountered regarding the survey questionnaires, in particular the fact that the questionnaires ended up being very long due to need to assess several types of national interventions, possibly resulting in fewer responses.
Outcomes and impacts on a European level were analysed by the Centre of Research of the Institut Paul Bocuse.
The questionnaires have reached a minimum of 52,000 employees. It is hard to say in which way the project had impacted on employees’ choice of balanced food as the general objective was to sensitise and provide this target group with the information needed to help them make healthier choices. Nevertheless, an important result from the 2010 survey was that 59% of employees were in favour of eating healthily at lunchtime meaning that this continues to be an important target group.
From the restaurant perspective, at least 5,000 establishments were reached via the questionnaires. Very positively, after a few months, more than 1,760 restaurants joined the FOOD restaurant network following national recommendations despite the fact that the interventions targeted at the restaurant staff took place quite late in the project. This short time frame could also offer an explanation to the second survey’s pretty low awareness results from restaurants (only 10% of respondents were familiar with the project’s objectives), yet the results indicated that 51% of them saw the value in serving healthy meal.
Therefore, continued support from programmes such as FOOD is needed to further increase the demand for this kind of food/meals by the customers and to increase the number of restaurants offering it.
On top of the many actions and tools created and implemented and the creation of the FOOD restaurant network a further achievement of the project is the creation of a successful partnership between the public and private sectors.

Employee questionnaire results

760 employees responded to the second questionnaire with more people over 50 participating and more of them being women compared with the first survey. The majority of respondents claimed to eat rather healthily (64%).
Unlike the results in 2009, 83,4% of respondents perceived balanced food to mean ‘various food in a moderate amount, in a nice environment’. Low calorie, fat, salt, and sugar were yet again only chosen by a small minority.
A smaller proportion (32%) of respondents were aware of a programme promoting healthy or balanced food in this sample than for the 2009 questionnaire with most of the information coming from the food industry.
15% of respondents have seen the FOOD logo. Out of these, only 3% of respondents (22 people) stated that they knew the content of the programme, with the website being their main source of information. Taking into account the very short time frame in which the actions and communications for this target group were produced, these figures were encouraging and welcomed by the national experts.
A majority (over 65%) of respondents reported having a lunch break every day (or almost every day) during the working week. Similar to the results from 2009, those who do not have lunch in a restaurant eat at home or bring their lunch from home. For those choosing not to eat out, the main reasons given were: preferring homemade food, lack of time and the inferior nutritional quality of the restaurant food.
The top five factors important to respondents in choosing a restaurant were: speed of service, affordability, the nutritional quality of the food, pleasant environment and a varied menu. Proximity to the workplace, which was ranked third when consolidating the results from the six countries, was only the seventh factor chosen by the Italian employees. This is different to the 2009 results where proximity was the main factor in choosing where to have lunch.
Apart from speed of service and affordability, Italian employees continue to place an emphasis on issues concerning healthy eating.

Restaurant questionnaire results

Fewer restaurants participated in the second questionnaire, 52 compared with 72 in 2009. Around 40% of them independently owned. Almost 65% of these restaurants offer a ‘dish of the day’ and over 60% offer a set menu at lunchtime.
75% of respondents showed interest in healthy or balanced food but only a few were aware of any existing nutritional programmes. Over 70% of respondents were interested in learning more about the subject. 23% perceived their knowledge to be sufficient and only 4% were not interested. These results indicate that restaurant owners are willing to learn more about healthy food and that they continue to be a good target group for the project’s interventions.
Lack of time and budget are most frequently chosen as reasons for not offering balanced meals. These results make it clear that working with restaurants to educate them about healthier cooking methods that are not more expensive or time consuming, should be advocated. This is in line with the response that free and short training sessions and leaflets are the most desired material for nutritional information.
In the past 12 months, half of respondents have either made some changes based on nutritional recommendations, were preparing to make changes or were considering making those changes. The restaurants currently have a positive attitude toward the nutritional recommendations. With the exception of an increase in the demand for different portion sizes, restaurant owners have not observed a change in the demand for healthier food by their customers.

Despite the difficulty in comparing the survey from 2009 to the later one, some themes emerge from both. Healthy food continued to be important to both target groups. Employees considered their eating habits to be rather healthy often choosing their lunch place based on nutritional quality of the food on offer, and three quarters of restaurateurs were interested in issues concerning balanced food. Both target groups were also interested in learning more about the subject.
In this second survey, both employees and restaurants were mostly still unaware of national nutritional programmes and with the lack of one; the FOOD project has an important role to play in educating these target groups about food and nutrition.