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Offer healthier options in cafeteria, vending machines
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metabolism, it disrupts people’s
ability to eat healthily because
it disrupts the normal routine
of preparing meals and things,”
said Clark.
And shift workers who
eat poorly and don’t exercise
enough are at greater risk of
developing heart disease, angina, stroke, high blood pressure, insomnia and digestive
problems, said Rachael Goodmurphy, a public health dietitian at KFL&A Public Health in
Kingston, Ont.
More than four million Ca-
nadian workers aged 19 to 64
worked something other than
a regular day shift in 2005, ac-
cording to Statistics Canada.
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for employers to access certain
healthy food items since it de-
pends on what their food ser-
vice supplier offers, she said.
“It’s also a challenge in the
perceptions of what employees
are expecting in terms of food
variety,” said Goodmurphy.
“There are perceptions that
some employees want unhealth-
ier items so that can be a barrier
if there are those misconcep-
tions that get construed.”
Employers can also create
a healthy eating culture where
management spearheads
healthy eating initiatives, puts
a healthy eating committee in
place and creates policies that
require healthy food options at
work, said Goodmurphy.
“It could be in their values
as an organization, they could
support healthy food initiatives such as having a community garden, providing access
to dietetic services such as a
registered dietitian, providing
nutrition education and skills
building,” she said.
OMNI employees receive
regular healthy eating tips
through a wellness newsletter, pay stub attachments and
healthy eating in-services once
per month, said Chartier.
While providing access to
these services and revamping a
company culture may be costly
at first, the investment will be
offset by having a healthier
workforce, said Clark.
“It’s always less expensive
to prevent disease than to treat
it, so any costs associated with
implementing interventions in
workplace health and safety
that include healthy eating
should offset the enormous
costs associated with treating
diabetes and other diseases.”
Employers should not only
be concerned about the nega-
tive health effects of poor eat-
ing, but also about the impact
it has on work performance. If
employees are eating unhealthy
foods, they will experience
fluctuations in blood sugars,
which cause periods of extreme
tiredness, irritability and light-
headedness, said Chartier.
“If they’re tired and slug-
gish, they’re not going to want
to do (their) job,” she said.
“And, especially in our indus-
try, the personal support work-
ers, it’s a heavy, heavy job —
you’re lifting residents, doing
a lot of on-your-feet work and
you also have to have the clar-
ity to realize what’s going on in
the environment around you.”
Offering healthier food op-
tions to employees, especially
shift workers, can decrease
burnout, sick time, overtime
hours and benefits usage,
which can get out of control
with an unhealthy staff, said
Chartier.
“We have a lot of older staff
and we found we’re getting an
increase… of staff who are suffering from insomnia, suffering
from heart disease — they’re
on really expensive medications for a lot of chronic conditions,” she said. “We wanted to
help them because it will help
(us) in the end.”
