10 Ways to Make Eating Well at Work FUN & Delicious

Think about the last time your company had a happy hour.

Did you have to incentivize people to come?

Probably not.

Why? Because happy hours are their own incentive – an opportunity to socialize in a relaxed setting, a time to relax and unwind...and access to free food and alcohol.

Oh, and they tend to be FUN.

Now, think about the last time you wanted to host a “healthy” food event at work. How many people came? Did you have to offer them an incentive? Were they excited? Did they hang around after it ended?

I spend the better part of each week teaching companies and their employees how to eat in a way that is energizing, immune-boosting, money-saving, delicious and FUN. Just yesterday, I was at a health system in Richmond, Virginia making a tasty homemade burrito bowl that everyone loved. 

With so many temptations and social pressure to eat processed, convenience food, making nourishing and energizing choices isn’t easy, especially when we’re at work. Food options that deplete us or temporarily meet an emotional need (i.e., boredom, frustration, fatigue, loneliness, etc.) are easily accessible in vending machines, break rooms and cafeterias, while access to nourishing options tends to be limited.

Despite the environmental challenges to doing so, I know that most people want to eat better because they want to feel better. In my interactions with thousands of employees, this theme has been recurring.

Instead of ?marketing our “healthy” food events as such, we use language that is more inviting – boost your mood, brain, immunity with food; eat for energy; nourish yourself without going broke; fuel up while you're on the road; etc.

Rather than telling everyone how “healthy” it is or moralizing food with words like "good," "bad," "or "junk," we invite them into a fun, positive experience. Research tells us that when people hear that something is “healthy,” they have certain expectations about how it will taste (which, for most people, often means bland, boring, or bad). We simply don't use negative, judgmental language when it comes to food. I encourage you to consider making that shift, too.

We also don't focus on weight in any of our marketing (e.g., "eating for weight loss") because of all the shame, guilt and other negative emotions that come along with a focus on weight. We promote and celebrate how powerful, wonderful, and beautiful the food is and invite people to connect with the food and with each other instead of the number on the scale. People appreciate this immensely.

Over the past ten years, as our wellness program has evolved and become an integral part of our culture, we’ve found a variety of ways to make eating well enjoyable and communal. Employees don’t have to decide between being social and nourishing their bodies; we’ve created community around doing both simultaneously.

Here are 10 FUN and delicious ways we’ve brought more nourishment to the workplace.

1. Plan a “Lettuce Do Lunch” potluck. We've been doing this for years, and our employees LOVE it. Some have even created their own lunch bunch that shares community meals every week. Each employee who wants to take part signs up to bring in an ingredient for a salad bar. Then, everyone comes together, assembles his or her own custom salad and eats lunch together. Sometimes we have a few people bring soups or stews and have a Soup & Salad potluck. Shout out to my friend, Lisa Drzyzga, for the punny "Lettuce Do Lunch" name!
2. Kick off opening day for your favorite sports team with an array of fresh food in your team colors. The Orioles are local to us, so we had purple grapes and orange slices, red pepper hummus with blue corn tortilla chips, black bean hummus with carrots, and a cantaloupe and blackberry fruit skewers. It was a fun way to kick off the season and provide some nourishment. These foods are also great for a Halloween potluck!
3. Set up a trail mix bar or customized oatmeal bar. Employees love creating their own customized trail mix combinations, and you can even create your own custom company blend. Companies like Nuts.com sell just about every ingredient you could possibly want for a trail mix and other office snacks as well as the dispensers to store them. Another option is to use Nuts.com to buy supplies for an oatmeal bar to encourage employees to eat a fueling breakfast.
4. Consider switching your coffee and tea service to one that is fair trade and promotes ethical business practices and fair wages.  We encourage employers to connect with food and seek to raise awareness about where it comes from and the impact it has on our larger society. More companies are getting on board with this and realizing the value of the triple bottom line (people-profits-planet). We switched our coffee and tea to a brand that is fairly traded. To learn more about this, check out Equal Exchange and their products. Each cup of coffee or tea helps the planet.
5. Host a Taste the Rainbow potluck. Here’s how it works. Create a sign-up sheet listing all of the colors of the rainbow and several name slots for each one. Employees sign up to bring in a dish featuring that color and also wear a shirt in that color as well. You are likely to end up with lots of whole, fresh food options because they tend to be the most colorful. Remember to take pictures and put them on your company intranet or Facebook page.
6. Bring a cooking demonstration onsite. Most employees want to eat well but lack confidence in their ability to shop for and prepare nourishing food that also tastes good. We brought cooking demonstrations to our company six years ago, and it opened up so many employees to trying new foods. Now I teach them, and it's one of my favorite parts of my job. If you are in the Baltimore/DC/VA/PA area and would like to learn more about bringing me to your company to deliver cooking demonstrations or nutrition workshops, contact us at [email protected]. If you are outside of that area, search “healthy cooking classes” and your city name in Google.
7. Let your employees know about LocalHarvest.org. This is a resource to find local farms, farmer’s markets, and crop shares / community supported agriculture (CSAs). Depending on the level of interest at your company, you may be able to have produce delivered to your office or to employees’ homes, sometimes at a preferred rate. Some farms are also looking for volunteers to help, so you could tie in a community wellbeing and service component along with the focus on fresh, local food. For more information, check out, www.LocalHarvest.org.
8. Surprise employees with a Make Your Own FroYo Day. We started doing this a few years ago and our employees LOVE it. We purchased a Yonanas machine on Amazoon and use it to make frozen yogurt our of frozen fruit. We purchase organic frozen fruit from BJs Wholesale Club and peel and freeze a bunch of bananas to make the “ice cream”. We also put out a bunch of toppings, including fresh berries, nuts and seeds, shredded coconut, dark chocolate chips, and even peanut butter as a yummy protein-packed mix-in.
9. Offer fruit that supports a cause. We have fruit delivered from Hungry Harvest on a biweekly basis. They are on a mission to end food waste and hunger, so they curate variety boxes of fresh, rescued produce (that wasn't pretty enough to be put in grocery stores) and pack it up for delivery to your doorstep for 20% less than grocery. You make it your own by adjusting the mix of fruits & veggies & adding on specialty items like eggs, granola & coffee. They also offer a HarvestRx program that has been used in hospitals and has been linked to reduced risk partners with medical professionals, hospitals and community care organizations to deliver fresh produce to those who need it most so they can get well, eat well and stay well.
10. Host a book club or movie night. Most of us are unaware of the potential impact of what we eat on how we feel and function. Inviting employees to come together to watch a documentary like Food Inc., Food Matters, Fed Up, or the Netflix series Cooked, is a great way to start raising awareness about our food and how it affects us. You could also organize a book club around books like Michael Pollan’s Food Rules, Marc David’s The Slow Down Diet, or Brian Wansink’s Mindless Eating.

**How about you? Do you have any ideas for how to making eating well fun instead of boring? Any cool initiatives you've put in place? Feel free to comment below!**