Employees of the Kolín-based carmaker TPCA Toyota Peugeot Citroën started preferring vegetarian and healthy meals. Today, every fifth guest to TPCA’s canteen opts for lighter food than traditional thick sauce meals with dumplings. The interest in healthy food increased after presenting the so-called “menu traffic lights”.

For many, in-house canteens are synonymous to high-fat cheap meals with no idea behind it, the only purpose of which is to get one’s stomach full. However, some employers have already understood the great impact food has on people’s both health and performance. One can just think about the menu for a while, consult it with experts, and then you see how easy it is to substitute standard, often high-fat food with healthier, full-bodied meals.

Quality food does miracles to the human body. It decreases tiredness after lunch, or sickness often caused by long-term low-quality catering without regular movement. However, only very few employers offer a truly healthy alternative on the menu today. „Three months ago, we have launched a system of traffic lights in our plant. After consulting the topic with professionals, in particular MUDr. Kateřina Cajthamlová and the nutrition specialist of our catering company Aramark, we have assigned meals to different categories: green, orange and red. Green stands for light food based on vegetables, high-quality fish and poultry. The green line also consists of the right procedure for cooking the meal with regard to preserving as much nutrients and vitamins as possible. Such food is still complex and full-bodied. The orange category includes medium food and red stands for fried, sweet and high-fat meals,“ Vadim Petrov, general director of the Corporate Affairs department, comments on the situation in catering.

However, the situation is not that the canteen of TPCA would be offering only a pork roast and a green salad as an alternative. The food in TPCA already includes dishes of foreign cuisines, such as the Japanese cuisine, which is famous for its full-bodied food that is yet friendly to the human organism. „We do not intend to make traditional Czech meals disappear. Our idea was to provide a wider choice. Let everyone choose what suits him best, taking into account both taste and health. We were pleased to see that after three months of functioning of the “menu traffic lights” we registered a doubled growth of the demand for “green food”. Three months ago, only every tenth member of staff was opting for vegetarian and vegetable dishes; today, every fifth does so,“ summarizes Vadim Petrov.

Facts about TPCA’s healthy food:

Healthy food is one part of the “healthy employee” concept, which includes various activities, such as superior medical care, preventive programmes, physiatry, campaigns aimed at quitting smoking, etc.
The project of traffic lights indicating the type of food (as to what concerns the load on the human body) has been launched in mid-August.
Menus are prepared by a nutrition expert of the catering company Aramark. Representatives of TPCA consulted the entire project including existing menus with MUDr. Cajthamlová.

TPCA plans to organize interactive seminars for its employees focused on the topic of catering. Starting next year, a doctor will be available to the employees for individual consultations on food.

Radek Kňava
Press Department, TPCA