Sowing the seeds

Inspiring healthy eating in young people

The healthyliving award (HLA) team recently reviewed City of Glasgow College’s City Bistro, an organisation that has gone from the standard HLA to achieving the HLA plus. The HLA plus is a higher level award – challenging but achievable – and criteria include that 70% of the food served must be healthy choices. To find out more about the plus award go to www.healthylivingaward.co.uk/caterers/the-plus-award

Emma Chalmers is the operations manager for City of Glasgow College within the hospitality and leisure faculty. It is one of the top performing colleges in the UK, offering over 2,000 courses. In Emma’s role, no two days are the same. She oversees several commercial food outlets across the college campuses.

‘City of Glasgow College has been a longstanding supporter of this award and we have held it for a number of years,’ Emma says. ‘The award allows us to consciously promote healthier options to students, staff and visitors. The food we sell in City Bistro, where we hold the award, is produced by students at the college as part of their course. This means that not only are we promoting healthy eating to customers, we are also teaching future catering professionals techniques and ingredients that are key to living a healthier lifestyle.

‘The healthyliving award has made us focus on how we source the best and healthiest products for City Bistro. The plus award is really just about us taking it one step further and making a few more tweaks to the daily menus.’

Emma says they did not need to make many adjustments in order to achieve HLA plus. They swapped some cereals for those on the compliant list, and they have switched to low-fat yogurt and cheese, which were easy changes to make.

Emma is passionate about promoting healthy eating to young people and adults and says: ‘By having so many healthy options available we are helping to encourage healthier purchasing habits among our students, staff and visitors.’

City Bistro and City of Glasgow College are now working on how they can spread the word about the HLA award plus, and they are planning to have more healthyliving plus days at their venue.

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