Food provided at work (dietary requirements)

[jleafe]

Hello,

I was wandering what your advice on this situation would be ... please roblem:

I do some part time work for my University, including working some open days. Generally they've always been pretty good at providing us with food / hot drinks etc, however there's recently been a change and I wanted to ask your opinions!

These shifts are generally 10hrs long and so we used to all get given food vouchers, where we would go to the canteen and buy our dinner, however to help overcrowding, queuing etc we are now provided with packed lunches, which consists of a sandwich, packet of crisps and a chocolate bar.

That's a lot of carbohydrates and obviously the chocolate is no use to me either, so I always end up sneaking to the canteen and buying myself food anyway.

So, I don't want to cause a fuss or anything, but I have been thinking of emailing in and asking that something be done, but the other week I was in the office when the staff were talking about another member of staff in another department who had requested to be given food vouchers again and they were basically slagging them off and ended up telling them they have to put up with the food provided or go hungry (or bring their own most probably). I don't believe the staff member had any specific issues with eating any of the food, he was just being picky, and I don't expect a massively negative response, but what would you do?


Thanks

 

[Hobs]

You could politely point out your dietary requirements associated to your diabetes and if that falls upon stony ground, provide yourself with a packed lunch that does meet your requirements.

 

[tazzle]

It does not sound like a particularily healthy lunch for anyone even if not diabetic :wink: ..... say someone was allergic to eggs, trying to lose weight or vegetarian . are there choices then.

Personally in the staff chatting situation I would try and chip in with the .... oh maybe some people have different needs with regard to religion or diet ( if you dont want to tell them about you personally)

or if you arent shy or want them to realise just how thoughtless they are you could be very specific about reminding them that people with diabetes cannot eat such c**P :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

If I were you I would politely email and explain how unsuitable this is to your dietary needs and I am sure they ( uni) will actually be mortified and bend over backwards to make sure you get something more suitable..... maybe they could generally offer little packs of fruit anyway instead of crisps and choccy , surprised that they are allowed to keep offering such stuff as standard given the drive for healthy lunches in educational establishments :wink:

Not quite the same but I find when I go to training events etc they provide tea and coffee but rarely other drinks............ leaving me to go searching as I hate both :evil:

 

[mbudzi]

I had a similar experience - except it was a client providing me with lunches. I emailed HR to explain that because of a medical condition I had a restricted diet which for ease of understanding can be summarised as being unable to eat normal quantities of carbohydrates. I said I would be happy to provide my own lunch if an alternative was difficult to source, but I didn't want to just do this and appear ungrateful for the food they were providing.

They were great about it, we picked out some foods that worked and I came clean about being diabetic. They were amazed that diabetes required such attention to what was being eaten. They thought is was all managed with drugs.

So everyone a winner. Hope that helps with some ideas.

 

[tazzle]

that sounds a lovely way to explain it mbudzi. :thumbup:


I have just seen on another forum ( non health) someone asking about taking cake in to office for a birthday and being aware that there are two newly diagnosed diabetics there. Great she thinking about her colleagues and whether they can eat it and whether it good or being offending / making presumptions if she does .

The replies very varied :lol:

 

[Sid Bonkers]

I emailed HR to explain that because of a medical condition I had a restricted diet which for ease of understanding can be summarised as being unable to eat normal quantities of carbohydrates. I said I would be happy to provide my own lunch if an alternative was difficult to source, but I didn't want to just do this and appear ungrateful for the food they were providing.

A great and very diplomatic way to deal with it :thumbup: :thumbup: :clap:



I would probably either just take my own lunch to eat or buy what I wanted from where ever I wanted to buy it from, I would have thought that you where entitled to a lunch break and surely where you spend it is up to you, or am I missing something?