A healthy and balanced eating pattern has a positive impact on both your body and your brain. In fact, the right fuel ensures an optimal energy balance, which makes us feel more comfortable in our own skin. And naturally this impacts our productivity during the work day. Investing in healthy nutrition is thus a win-win for employee and employer.
Most people know the difference between healthy and less healthy food very well. Usually they want to make the healthy choice too. And yet these good intentions often get bogged down by the issues of the day: no time for breakfast, a cookie to go along with your (third) coffee at 10, a quick sandwich for lunch and off you go to the candy machine at 4…
However, the blame for these (un)healthy choices doesn’t entirely lie with the employee but with the employer too. And the employer would definitely benefit from including healthy food in the company DNA: the better employees eat, the better they feel, the better the productivity. The World Health Organization (WHO) explained the link between healthy nutrition and productivity before.
Energy all day long
Nutrition has a big impact on the way your body functions and performs. It is important to provide your body with the right fuel, so you can manage the workday without a hassle. Unhealthy nutrition mostly consists of fast sugars and fats. Fast sugars break down faster and lead to fluctuations in the blood sugar. Fats strain the digestive system. Both of them lead the infamous afternoon dip, including difficulty focusing, fatigue and irritability
In a healthy eating pattern we mainly look at the so-called slow sugars, as they lead to a balanced energy balance. Slow sugars can be found in, for example, rice, whole wheat pasta and legumes. Your body converts them slower into a well-dosed amount of energy, so the typical afternoon dip can be avoided. This helps employees immensely to maintain their focus, alertness and general ‘fitness’ throughout the day and create and generate returns. It is generally known that fit employees have less work accidents and are absent less or for shorter periods of time. Investing in healthy food is thus a win-win for both employee and employer.
Less stress
A healthy and balanced eating pattern not only impacts your body, but your mind benefits from it as well. Thanks to the right fuel and balanced energy balance we feel better in our own skin and our mind. The result is a better concentration, improved focus, higher level of creativity and faster problem-solving. But a healthy eating pattern has a postive impact in a broader context too: it stimulates a good mood and reduces the likelihood of stress and depression. Important to know for the purpose of stress reduction and prevention of burnout
B-Tonic helps
So, the eating pattern of your employees impacts their productivity. Although the knowledge about healthy food tends to be present, it isn’t always – often because of time constraints or irregular working hours – put into practice. As employer you can play a role by offering healthy choices at work and stimulate those. B-Tonic can help you with this, we offer solutions tailored to the requests and needs of each company, both for white-collar workers and for (shift-working) labourers.
