Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Fast food chains around T&T are cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing the im­pact that health­i­er op­tions on their menus could have on their busi­ness­es.

This is ac­cord­ing to the chair­man of Restau­rant Hold­ings Ltd, Derek Wad­dell, who is serv­ing as a li­ai­son be­tween the com­pa­nies and the Min­istry of Health.

In an ef­fort to re­duce the in­ci­dence of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCD), es­pe­cial­ly among chil­dren, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, is at­tempt­ing to get fast food es­tab­lish­ments to pro­vide health­i­er op­tions.

He met with sev­er­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives on June 26, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

Al­so in at­ten­dance, ac­cord­ing to a min­istry re­lease at the time, were se­nior ex­ec­u­tives from Glob­al Brands, Mario’s Pizze­ria Ltd, Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd, Jen­ny’s on the Boule­vard, Pap­py’s Fried Chick­en, Chuck E Cheese, Arazzi and Salt n’ Pep­per Clas­si­cal In­di­an Cui­sine.

The re­lease said they were to recom­mence dis­cus­sions in two months af­ter restau­rants de­vised strate­gies to in­clude health­i­er op­tions on their menus and to re­duce salt and sug­ar con­tent.

How­ev­er, Wad­dell told Guardian Me­dia they would be ready to meet with Deyals­ingh one month lat­er than ex­pect­ed, in Sep­tem­ber.

“We’re not at lib­er­ty to dis­cuss any­thing be­cause ... as a group or even in­di­vid­u­al­ly, we haven’t com­mit­ted to any ini­tia­tives at this point in time,” he said.

“Every­body is look­ing at their busi­ness to see what the po­ten­tial im­pact is and get­ting ready for the min­is­ter.”

He did not give ex­act de­tails on how fre­quent­ly the group of restau­ra­teurs met to dis­cuss the op­tion but not­ed that they met “a cou­ple of times.”

He al­so de­clined to go in­to fur­ther de­tails about what was asked of them and the op­tions be­ing con­sid­ered.

Di­rec­tor of Glob­al Brands Group of Com­pa­nies, An­tho­ny Sab­ga-Aboud, told Guardian Me­dia he be­lieves cus­tomers will be re­cep­tive to health­i­er food op­tions at fast food es­tab­lish­ments be­cause they “will al­ways ap­pre­ci­ate va­ri­ety and in­no­va­tion.”

Asked if they see these health­i­er op­tions as be­ing a vi­able op­tion busi­ness-wise, he said: “Vi­a­bil­i­ty of the var­i­ous al­ter­na­tives and mea­sures will de­pend on the cus­tomer re­sponse, but we an­tic­i­pate it will be a wel­comed ad­di­tion.”

Speak­ing at the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s (WHO) 76th World Health As­sem­bly in Gene­va, Switzer­land, in May, Deyals­ingh took aim at fast food for its role in per­pet­u­at­ing NCDs. He es­pe­cial­ly called out how they are mar­ket­ed to chil­dren, liken­ing it to the mar­ket­ing of cig­a­rettes.

He lat­er told Guardian Me­dia the aim of the meet­ing with fast food es­tab­lish­ments was to get vol­un­tary buy-in to pro­vid­ing health­i­er items on their menus.

“We are not speak­ing about reg­u­la­tions. We are not speak­ing of any puni­tive mea­sures. What we are speak­ing about is sit­ting down with the fast food in­dus­try, the mega brands es­pe­cial­ly, and ask­ing them to be aware of two things. One, how they mar­ket their prod­ucts and two, if we can work with them to of­fer healthy op­tions for food and drink,” he said then.

“We want these com­pa­nies to thrive and to con­tin­ue to make their prof­its be­cause we un­der­stand they are ma­jor em­ploy­ers, they pay tax­es. So we are go­ing the way of moral sua­sion, the same way I did it with the lo­cal soft drink man­u­fac­tur­ers.”