5 Nutritional Goals To Create for Your Employees by PaisleyH Blog entry

Blog: How to Become the Healthiest You
by PaisleyH

5 Nutritional Goals To Create for Your Employees

For when your employees want fitness goals, this is a good read.

Date: 3/19/2021 7:28:26 PM ( 3 y ) ... viewed 191 times

The health of any business's employees is essential to maintain. Workers ensure that a company can perform its duties, so maintaining the health of these individuals keeps efficiency high. Unfortunately, you as an employer can't force your employees to have a healthy diet. However, you can give encouragement and information. You may want to try setting some nutritional goals for your workers to strive for. If you're looking for ideas, here's five nutritional goals to create for your employees.

1. Drink Enough Water Daily
The importance of drinking enough water can't be overstated. It completes several necessary functions in your body, including lubricating your joints, creating saliva, excreting sweat and maintaining your body temperature. While your employees likely won't be in danger of death from lacking water, people can still suffer if an insufficient amount is taken in daily. Functionality may also be affected. For instance, projects such as the sale of accounts receivable could be delayed if your workers are dehydrated. Provide a chart that shows how much water should be drunk by people of various weights. To make this goal easier to reach without harming the environment, consider bringing a water filter into the office for everyone to use.

2. Eat a Vegetable Each Day
This goal sounds almost insultingly simple, but many people go days or even weeks without consuming a single vegetable. It's easy to forget if veggies aren't a staple of your eating habits. In order to combat this tendency, you could set a goal about eating at least one vegetable a day. You can make this even more effective by giving out information on veggie options. Keep in mind that greens, especially dark and leafy ones, are the best for your body. Therefore, foods like spinach and kale should be brought up fairly often.

3. Have a Meatless Day Every Week
While meat provides a hefty source of protein, it can also be detrimental to your health. Meats, especially red meats, are high in saturated fats. These fats may cause raised cholesterol levels, which could result in heart diseases in the future. Ergo, finding sources of protein that aren't meat is healthy to at least try. Even if your employees are consistent meat eaters, you might consider asking that at least one day of the week is meatless. Give out information on effective protein substitutes, such as nuts, tofu and beans.

4. Switch to Whole Grains
Eating white bread and similar products is fairly common, mainly due to the taste and price. However, this type of bread is far less healthy than its whole grain alternative. Whole grains provide healthy amounts of fiber, as well as multiple other nutrients. White flour is enriched, which means it's lost a lot of nutrients. Because of this, you may want to encourage your employees to eat whole grains from now on. This is a hard switch to make, but it can be highly beneficial in the long run. Since this is a particularly difficult goal to reach, you might consider offering incentives to those that achieve it.

5. Bring Healthier Snacks
When you work in an office environment, it's often tempting to snack. Snacking, other than providing nourishment, can help to wake you up. Unfortunately, eating popular snacks tends to be unnecessarily unhealthy. Even commercial granola bars have more fat than other brands. Encourage your employees to seek out healthier snack options. If people seem reticent, emphasize that there are healthier versions of basically every snack food available. Of course, the best option is generally to eat fruits and veggies. It'll be even more helpful if you can provide these foods yourself.
While you can't force your employees to become healthy overnight, you can contribute in other ways. Providing encouragement, information, food options and even incentives may just do the trick. Just be sure to avoid negative or shaming tactics. Stay positive and create a nutritionally healthy work environment.