Magazine: It is not the mirror that is distorting!

Anna Zoltai, head of the National Food Chain Safety Authority’s (NEBIH) Horeca and catering supervision department spoke to Trade magazin about the NEBIH inspection performed at catering service providers of schools and kindergartens. She told that all the stakeholders were surprised at the bad results.

About 1-1.5 million people are fed by public catering companies and the majority of them are children, who unlike adults have no choice but to use the service. Usual check-ups focus on hygienic conditions and the presence of required nutrients in the food, but NEBIH started to concentrate on the enjoyment value too because children decide whether to eat the food or not based on this. The usage of local and regional ingredients is a good initiative but it is also important not to transport cooked meals from a long distance, e.g. some children in Budapest get their lunch from Esztergom! Inspectors visited places where according to the parents there were problems. NEBIH does the inspection and publishes the result, and parents are really grateful to them – sometimes the heads of institutions too. Two major public catering service providers have already contacted NEBIH an inquired about opportunities for working with them. Everyone has their own responsibility in their position, but the tool as well: the community. In general NEBIH’s task is to call the attention of authorities to the fact that there are major problems. NEBIH is struggling with the same problems as OTH with its nutritional health recommendation, published in 2011: if the state would set rules in a way that those who don’t keep them are fined, it would only take money out of the system and children would get even poorer service than before! At the moment children are fed by public catering companies from a sum of HUF 300-1,000/person, part of this is paid by parents and another part comes from tax payers. The problem is, very often this sum is used to cook such bad food that it ends up in the garbage can!