Bon Appétit Management Company Partners with Fed Up Film, Encourages Guests to Go Sugar-Free for 10 Days
From-scratch pioneer to host Fed Up Challenge at select corporate cafés
Wednesday, May 7 (Palo Alto, CA): Life in America is sweet — in fact too sweet, according to a powerful new film that opens across the U.S. on Friday, May 9.
Fed Up combines the moving stories of four children whose families are struggling to lower their weight to a healthy balance and hard-hitting interviews with well-known nutrition and public-policy experts. It exposes some of the misconceptions — encouraged by the packaged-food industry — Americans have about food and weight loss that have resulted in the greatest public-health crisis of our time.
Bon Appétit Management Company CEO Fedele Bauccio joined the Fed Up Advisory Board at the invitation of executive producer Katie Couric (who narrates the film) and producer Laurie David (An Inconvenient Truth). Bon Appétit has partnered with several of our corporate clients to support the Fed Up Challenge in our cafés, inviting our guests to commit to cutting out all sugar for 10 days.
“Fed Up shows how added sweeteners have become a terrible problem for us as a nation,” says Fedele. “At Bon Appétit, we’ve always cooked everything from scratch. Our chefs rely on top-quality ingredients, herbs, and spices — not sugar — for flavor. But we care about our guests’ well-being when they leave our cafés, too. We know that they are concerned about their health and that of their families.”
The packaged foods such as granola bars and spaghetti sauce that American families rely on are high not only in sugars, as the film makes disturbingly clear, but also in sodium, another unhealthy ingredient. (Last October, Bon Appétit teamed up with the Center for Science in the Public Interest on a companywide sodium reduction campaign for Food Day.)
Bon Appétit Fed Up Challenge poster (click to enlarge)
For the week starting Monday, May 12, employees dining at the corporate cafés for SAP (in Palo Alto, CA), Adobe (San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Lehi, UT), Medtronic (Minneapolis), SAS (Cary, NC), and several others can opt for special Fed Up Challenge breakfast and lunch menu items from their Bon Appétit chefs, indicated by a red Unsweetened sticker. The Bon Appétit teams will also go the extra mile to source unsweetened versions of items that often contain hidden sugars, such as yogurt, sandwich bread, tortillas, and condiments.
The Fed Up Challenge information tables will provide materials on continuing the Challenge away from work, resources on the many other names sugar hides under in packaged foods, and the surprising amount of sugar found in common beverages including fruit juices. Unsweetened “spa waters” and house-brewed iced teas will provide zero-sugar thirst quenching, while Bon Appétit Hydrate the Healthy Way posters placed at soda dispensers will remind guests that soda contains considerable amounts of sugar.
The Bon Appétit teams and its clients have “sweetened the deal” for taking the Challenge by offering drawings for tickets to see the movie when it opens at local theaters. At SAP, the corporate Fit Club has donated three FitBit wellness trackers for those who opt for Challenge menu items all week, and at Medtronic, the campus Wellness Center will donate three free memberships.
“Bon Appétit has long been a leader in offering healthy, sustainably sourced food for Americans at work and at school,” says Fed Up producer Laurie David. “It’s an honor to have their support in helping people learn to feed themselves in a similar way at home.”
In October, Bon Appétit will roll out a sugar-free education campaign companywide at hundreds of locations in 32 states for Food Day 2014.
About Bon Appétit Management Company
Bon Appétit Management Company is an on-site restaurant company offering full food-service management to corporations, universities, and specialty venues. Based in Palo Alto, CA, Bon Appétit has more than 500 cafés in 32 states. Clients include eBay, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Art Institute of Chicago. All Bon Appétit food is cooked from scratch, including sauces, stocks, and soups. A pioneer in environmentally sound sourcing policies, Bon Appétit has developed programs addressing local purchasing, the overuse of antibiotics, sustainable seafood, the food and climate change connection, humanely raised meat and eggs, and farmworker welfare. It has received numerous awards for its work, from organizations including the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the James Beard Foundation, Chefs Collaborative, Natural Resources Defense Council, Seafood Choices Alliance, The Humane Society of the United States, and Food Alliance.
Contact: Bonnie Azab Powell, 650-798-8022, [email protected]
Watch the Fed Up trailer: