Our response to Food Standards Scotland’s recommendations for an Out of Home Strategy for Scotland

We welcome Food Standard Scotland’s recommendations for an Out of Home strategy for Scotland. The recommendations, outlined in today’s board paper, have been published alongside the responses to the public consultation on Improving the Out of Home Food Environment in Scotland, and include better nutrition and calorie information, improvements in nutritional quality of food served out of home including in the public sector, and greater efforts to bring national diet closer to the Scottish dietary goals. The measures that Food Standards Scotland are recommending to Ministers are an important step in changing the out of home sector for the better and tackling the overwhelming public health problem of overweight and obesity in Scotland.

We also welcome two new reports on eating out of home published today by Food Standards Scotland. The reports describe the out of home food sector in recent years, revealing how popular it is to eat out in Scotland and what people think about food available out of home.

Lorraine Tulloch, Programme Lead of Obesity Action Scotland said: “Last year our work indicated that an average bag of chips could unknowingly provide a woman with half her recommended daily calorie intake. The proposed measures will ensure that consumers are fully informed about what they are buying and that the food industry improve their offering. However, a lot of these measures rely on voluntary action by food premises and do not address marketing and promotion of unhealthy products out of home. The new Out of Home Strategy needs to empower and help people make healthier choices every day. We will be carefully monitoring progress to ensure Scots get the heathier choices they desire for themselves and their children.”