Workers’ nutrition plan raises attendance

A new study has shown that health and nutrition initiatives that can cut absenteeism rates and boost general health among employees would cost €95 or less a year per worker.

The study looked at the costs of implementing and delivering workplace dietary interventions using data from a workplace dietary intervention trial, the Food Choice at Work Study, which in turn had looked at the eating habits of 850 employees in four multinational workplaces in Cork City.

The Food Choice at Work study monitored the impact of nutrition education and environmental dietary interventions to their physical wellbeing over a period of time, and showed obese workers are more likely to miss work and clock up a higher number of sick days than healthier colleagues, and also indicated “traffic light” coding on workplace meals would help employees to make healthier choices.

The latest study shows the cost of those interventions, estimating that the average annual cost per employee peaked at €95, with other options costing less, depending on what was included.

The report outlines how chronic diet-related diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke continue to endanger population health worldwide and how “the surrounding environment in which an individual lives and works has the potential to influence their health- related behaviour”.

However, it said the cost to employers associated with implementing and delivering these interventions had been largely unknown and so the researchers analysed data taken from the Food Choice at Work study.

The interventions, under different headings, included individual nutrition consultations, menu modification, price discounts for healthier food options, and portion- size control, among other initiatives. All costs incurred from implementing and delivering the interventions over a one-year period were measured.

It found that average annual cost per employee for implementing and maintaining the nutrition education intervention was estimated at €57, that the equivalent cost for implementing and maintaining the environmental dietary modification intervention was estimated at €7, and that the average annual costs for a combined intervention was estimated at €62.

When physical assessment costs are included in the total costs, the average annual cost per employee rose to €89 for the nutrition education intervention, €49 for the environmental dietary modification intervention, and €95 for the combined intervention.

A five-strong team based in UCC carried out the research, entitled A cost-analysis of complex workplace nutrition education and environmental dietary modification interventions. It was published in the BMC Public Health journal.

One of the report authors, Sarah Fitzgerald, a postdoctoral researcher with Food Choice at Work, said that programme had now been commercialised and 10 companies had signed up.