‘Healthy eating is the future'

Sir Francis Mackay, chairman of contract catering giant Compass Group, believes the biggest influence on the food industry in the coming decades will be healthy eating.

Speaking on Tuesday 13 January at the Food and Drink Federation's annual City Food Lecture in London, Mackay said that typical menus would be transformed by the public's increased awareness of healthy eating and concerns over obesity.

He said that the next generation of consumers wanted food that "isn't merely less bad for you, but is actively good".

Mackay warned: "We will come under increasing pressure to reduce the fat content of processed foods and to provide more explicit information on fat and calorie content."

He reckoned that food service operators were ideally placed to take the lead in providing healthy food. He pointed to Compass's recent healthy-eating innovation for schools, called Wellgood, which removed salt from food and encouraged steaming, grilling and oven-baking.

But he argued that people needed to be reconnected with food, and that was the responsibility of parents and the Government as well as the food chain. He also urged the Government to reintroduce practical cooking classes in schools and put food education back on the school curriculum.

"Today's parents as well as today's children have been brought up in a culture of convenience food and take-aways, and many simply have no idea how to prepare a meal from scratch with raw ingredients."