When fish and chips shops open their doors today, they may well face questions from their customers about how many calories are in their fish and chips, or whether they can do a 600 calorie portion for them.

This demand will partly come off the back of this article in the Mail this morning: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6675027/Oh-COD-Cut-fish-chips-just-600-CALORIES-combat-obesity-crisis.html

Many fish and chip shops have already had their fish and chips nutritionally tested and will be in a prime position to give their customers scientifically backed information to help them with their meal choices, but many are not yet prepared.

Calorie Reduction - Why the nation needs to act?

Portions have got larger over the years and people have become less active meaning that the NHS is having to treat more obesity related health problems.

By making small changes we can all help improve the health of the nation and also to improve our food quality and profitability at the same time.

The NFFF Perfect Portion scheme is dedicated to food quality and portion control, useful tricks and tips on how to manage your oil, offer more portion choice and we even offers a service to have your food nutritionally tested. You can visit this website at: www.perfectportion.co.uk

Nutritional testing legal requirements – the facts…

It is not yet mandatory to do this. The NFFF’s work addressing issues raised by Public Health England (PHE) and working with the British Takeaway Campaign (BTC) has borne results for our sector. PHE initially proposed mandatory calorie labelling for all out of home sector businesses by 2020.

Through the work of the NFFF and involvement with BTC, PHE have challenged us to achieve a 20% reduction in calories by 2024 through a voluntary process for small businesses.

If we don’t achieve this as a sector, then it will become mandatory so we do need fish and chip shops to act now.

PHE will publish their final guidelines by mid-2019, but they currently propose:

Food for thought!

The NFFF offers a fully comprehensive nutritional testing service.Any fish and chip shops wanting to find out just how many calories are in a portion of their fish and chips and how they compare with a McDonalds Big Mac meal, BK Whopper meal or KFC Boneless Banquet meal then the NFFF Perfect Portion nutritional testing can take advantage of this service.

We have a range of tests available through a UKAS accredited laboratory at heavily discounted rates for NFFF members. With single shop membership costing just £204.06 (inc VAT) for a year, it can pay for itself with the discounts on four tests or more.

Full menu testing – let us work out a package for you. Send us a copy of your menu and we’ll do you a quote.

For more information on how the NFFF can help you to meet these guidelines please contact us on 0113 230 7044 or email to mail@federationoffishfriers.co.uk