October 16th marks our best day of the year. Team Quattro comes together with jubilation and pride to celebrate our favourite thing on the planet – of course, it’s World Food Day. Our extensive ranges of delectable ready to use and ambient products are living proof that we live, breathe, manufacture, produce and distribute foods that ignite in us a passion that we can barely express in words.
World Food Day promotes healthy diets for a zero hunger world. It was established by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations to encourage those involved in the food industry from farmers to government figures to make change happen by helping us all eat in a way that’s healthier for us, for society and for our planet. Those behind the initiative aim to support every country to develop, update and implement a set of viable and practical dietary guidelines to communicate important messages about nutrition and its links to preventing ill-health and chronic diseases to their population. It supports the development of nutrition policies and education programmes, encouraging everyone, especially educators, health professionals and policy makers to promote adding vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts and whole grains to the people’s diet whilst reducing refined starches, sugar, fats and salt.
We know we should, but how do we make effective and lasting change to our eating habits? The World Food Day website offers some tips:
- Include bucket-loads of fresh, organic and seasonal fruit and veg every day and add nuts and wholegrains to yoghurts, cereals and salads
- Switch ‘white’ (refined) for ‘brown’ pasta, bread and rice
- Be a nutrition nerd – know (and understand) the jargon – unsaturated fats are better than saturated and trans-fats
At Quattro Foods we’re extremely health conscious. Our wide range of world foods includes curries, sauces and pastes, many spiced with locally sourced ingredients. And our commitment to health doesn’t stop at people – we care very deeply about our planet too.
Our work in the food manufacturing industry has a huge environmental impact and we, as well as all other food manufacturers, have a responsibility to incorporate sustainability techniques into our processes.
We have been working hard over the last few years to design and implement practical strategies including recycling waste into electricity to power some parts of our Portsmouth factory; packaging our foods responsibly; using recyclable material for our food service contracts and recycling our pallets. We have also replaced every light fitting to reduce electricity consumption and ultimately our carbon footprint.
The team at Quattro believes that highly nutritious food should be affordable and accessible to everyone and wherever possible we reduce sugar, fat and salt and avoid allergen contamination. We also buy produce from local agricultural businesses to limit the fuel required for travelling and to support the local economy and we only work with farmers who practice high animal welfare standards.
Our kitchen teams use traditional hand-cooking methods to minimise the processing of food and to further reduce our carbon footprint, and we are fully committed to conserving and reusing energy and water.
So as October 16th approaches we hope you give a generous amount of thought to the food you consume and how it affects your body – and our planet.
Keep eating, keep being aware, and keep loving healthy, tasty food. Happy World Food Day!