India Inc isn’t in the pink of health. To a large extent, food and snacks served in office cafés are to be blamed for this. But things are beginning to change, through gradually
A dinner lubricates business,” wrote Lord William Stowell, an English judge and jurist. But then Stowell lived in a time — 1745 to 1836 — when a hearty dinner followed by a heartier dessert didn’t magnify the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity. At least not the way it does now. Besides, the dinner he talked about was not offered in office cafés in disposable trays or prepared in unhealthy oil or, for that matter, heated and reheated over and over again.
The fact is that office lunches, snacks and dinners — for the thousands on late-night shifts — haven’t exactly kept corporate India in the pink of health. A recent survey of over 10,000 professionals across India found that over 50 per cent of the employees were overweight. Almost half of the working women and 25 per cent of men were also found to have unhealthily thick waistlines. “What’s more worrying is that these are mostly young people in the age group of 20 to 40 years,” says Sheela Krishnaswamy, director (wellness) at Bangalore-based ChiHealth, which conducted the survey over eight months this year. Organisations such as these, which offer healthcare plans for corporates, blame office cafeterias to a large extent.
But things are beginning to change, though gradually.
Beyond burgers
“Until a few years ago, hardly any business organisation gave any thought to the food served in the café,” says corporate trainer Madhavi Gunjal who frequently travels to IT hub Bangalore. Lunch meant pizza, burger, and paneer or chicken roll followed by aerated drinks. Snacks seldom went beyond samosas, oily bread pakoras, wafers, French fries, tea, coffee or juice in tetra packs.
Companies are now beginning to realise that it’s wiser to invest in employee health rather than simply offer a health insurance, says Karthik Rao, founder and CEO of ChiHealth . “Employees today have at least one and a half meals — lunch and the evening snacks — at work. It helps if they eat healthy,” says Rao. So while the pizzas and burgers continue to remain on the menu, employees also have healthier choices like a proper lunch of daal, vegetable, rice, roti, curd and salad, cooked in less oil and with more attention to hygiene.
“At Wipro, apart from the regular south Indian dishes, we have something called the ‘Health Menu’,” says Nupur Shekhar, who runs the ‘Fit For Life’ wellness programme at the IT giant. “We’ve removed all deep-fried stuff from the café, except for the medu vada which is a staple south Indian dish,” she adds. Wafers and aerated drinks, too, have disappeared from the shelves (though wafers are offered at tuck shops). Instead, fresh juice counters and health food like sprouts, poha and moong dal chilla have been introduced. “A variety of salads are also available at our salad bars,” says Shekhar.
And to prevent employees from succumbing to temptation, posters specifying the calorie count of food items have been put up in the café. The company has also put a stop to caterers serving food prepared outside. “Only those caterers who are willing to prepare the food in the Wipro premises are allowed,” says Shekhar, adding, “This way we can maintain quality and hygiene.”
More From This Section
Gunjal says that while the process has started, quality is yet to become a benchmark, especially when the food is mass cooked for hundreds of employees. HR departments of several organisations are looking into this issue as well by holding regular food audits.
Healthy in-betweens
The concept of healthy snacking — with lemonade, butter milk, green tea, fresh fruit juice, fruit and potato chaat, and boiled corn — is also gaining ground. Krishnaswamy, who’s also the national vice-president of the Indian Dietetic Association, says that while IT companies have shown a greater inclination towards health-consciousness, the BPO sector appears to be lagging behind. That’s an opinion a senior executive in a leading Gurgaon-based BPO would like to debate. “We have something called the ‘Town Hall’ session every month, where employees voice their grievances to the HR department,” says the executive. “If employees say the food in the café is too oily or it makes them sleepy, we take up the matter with the caterer,” she says.
One big challenge has been educating caterers, many of whom think that healthy food means bland food. “For example, a ‘soup, sandwich, fruit salad’ menu wasn’t quite in their scheme of things until nutritionists and dietitians stepped in some years ago,” says Krishnaswamy. Now, sessions are held in Hindi and regional languages like Kannada and Tamil as well to reach out to caterers and food handlers.
In many ways, India remains a treatment–focused economy. The corporate health report is a case in point. But a beginning has been made and India Inc is moving in a healthy direction.
