In Sweden

Employees

412 Swedish employees responded to the questionnaire. From this initial investigation, some important results emerged that helped to shape the first set of tools and messages.

Figure 1: Breakdown of employee reported weight

This first graph analyses the overall weight of employees. Sweden is the country with the highest reported overweight ratio out of the six countries (Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden) with fewer than 50% of the respondents being of a normal weight.

Figure 2: Percentage of employees having lunch daily:

The percentage of employees who have a lunch break during the working day is shown in the following graph. 87.6% of employees, the highest of the six countries, have a lunch break every working day. Only a small minority never have a lunch break clearly making the majority a suitable target group.

Figure 3: Breakdown of lunch places frequented by Swedish employees:

More than half of Swedish employees eat lunch in a restaurant (45.3%):
When in the restaurant, the majority of employees reported choosing their meal based on what they want to eat at that time (54%). Only 23% of respondents reported choosing the balanced dish. This finding should be passed on the restaurants to encourage them to make the balanced dish the tastiest to get it chosen more often.
Another issue emerged from the survey regarding the need to educate employees about the benefits of balanced meals as only about a third reported choosing the restaurant based on the nutritional quality of the food on offer.
Positively, the survey concluded that the Swedish employees are relatively health conscious having the right attitude for such interventions. 51% of respondents have fruit as a snack, drink water at lunchtime and have rather healthy breakfast.
The majority of employees (26.9%) chose the Keyhole symbol as the best to indicate the healthy balanced dish. This cooperation with the scheme has led to a number of country specific tools to be developed building on the programme’s existing initiatives (see tray model and information holders in chapter 8).
The decision on type of messages to be designed was to have them short, simple and playful.

Restaurants

80 restaurants responded to the first questionnaire. The majority of restaurant owners expressed the wish to receive information and training on balanced food including staff training as well as cooking and serving instruction. More than 50% claimed not to have sufficient skills for preparing balanced meals yet the percentage of those who claiming to have knowledge (45%) was the biggest out of the six countries.

Figure 4: Restaurant owners’ knowledge about balanced food

92.5% of respondents (the highest out of the six countries) do not see any obstacles to promoting balanced nutrition in their restaurants.

It clearly appears that in Sweden, both employees and restaurant owners are open to learning more about healthy food and lifestyle.

The Keyhole label was accepted by both sectors making it a potentially good scheme to partner with. Through collaboration with the Keyhole scheme the FOOD project was to benefit from increased visibility and acceptability.