Calorie Counting and Allergen Identifying Tool for Irish Food Service Industry
21 Oct 2016 --- The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) is urging food service business to use its free online tool MenuCal to identify 14 categories of allergens and calculate calories within their dishes. FSAI research shows 95 percent of consumers would like calorie labeling on menus in all or some food outlets. MenuCal was created to address food industry concerns about the lack of expertise and resources to accurately calculate calories for display on menus and the associated costs involved.
The tool, considered the first of its kind in Europe and has already been sold to the Food Standards Agency Northern Ireland and Food Standards Scotland, has been enhanced to display allergen information on food to help consumers make more informed choices and help businesses comply with their legal requirements to display this type of information.
According to Dr Pamela Byrne, CEO, FSAI, MenuCal was designed by chefs for chefs and 80 percent of chefs found it easy to use and said they would use it again.
“With the legal requirement for all food businesses to display allergens and with the Government’s proposal in the obesity policy and action plan to have calorie posting legislation coming down the track, MenuCal is an important tool for every food service kitchen to use. The FSAI recognizes the importance for us, as a regulatory agency, of developing new innovative technologies to help food businesses comply with the law. MenuCal is a free, online resource which allows food businesses to upload, modify and securely store their recipes,” she says.
FSAI brought together a team of nutritionists, computer scientists and food business trainers to create a bespoke, easy-to-use solution for the Irish market that acts as a resource to assist chefs identify calorie values, taking account of types and quantities of ingredients used, method of preparation and portion size and also highlights the 14 categories of allergens, which is a legal requirement. MenuCal contains over 2,000 basic ingredients and also allows you to add your own specific ingredient information to suit your business.
“A quarter of daily calories are consumed through meals and snacks eaten out. This is a growing trend especially among the young. Calorie menu labeling allows people to make informed choices about the food they buy. The demand for calorie information is here to stay. Three in every 100 people in Ireland have a food allergy and have to be very careful when eating out to avoid becoming ill. Some allergic reactions can be fatal. Accurate allergen information is vital to protect these vulnerable consumers. Identifying allergens in food is challenging, but keeping this information up-to-date is almost impossible without an online system like MenuCal,” says Dr Mary Flynn, Chief Specialist Public Health Nutrition, FSAI.
MenuCal is being endorsed by celebrity chef Catherine Fulvio who helped launch the new initiative with the FSAI to encourage food business across Ireland to use the tool.
The new initiative will see food businesses, owners and chefs reached through a digital campaign across social media channels, sharing insights and reasons for using the free online resource. She demonstrated to an audience how she uses MenuCal routinely by preparing two of her favorite dishes, modifying both recipes as she cooked using it.
“I’m a big fan of MenuCal and I find it invaluable in the kitchen. It’s so easy and quick to input ingredients and save recipes. It removes the need to keep excel spreadsheets that you need to manually input or amend ingredients. Once the ingredients are in, it’s very easy to modify your recipes. If, for example you have a signature sauce that you use in three dishes, and you want to make a change to the ingredients list for the sauce, that change is automatically made to all the three dishes. It’s also great if the kitchen receives a query about allergens, which we can revert quickly and confidently to the customer with the accurate information,” says Fulvio.
