Real Ways Restaurants Are Dishing Up Healthy, Nourishing Food

Less of the bad stuff… 

For many businesses, the process of feeding people well starts with reducing the kitchen’s reliance on fats (especially trans and saturated fats), sugar, salt and highly processed foods. 

At Rosewood Phuket, Thailand, Executive Chef Luca De Negri developed a set of Wellness Cuisine principles to guide the hotel’s menu design, an approach that gives guests the chance to eat well, feel good and tread lightly on the planet. It’s all about celebrating local, seasonal produce and reflecting the region’s food culture — while staying rooted in sound nutrition. As part of this, the kitchen team works to reduce the use of salt by finding more inventive ways to maximise flavour. They build depth with spices, herbs, citrus and other aromatics, along with flavour-building techniques from around the world. They’re also wary of added sugars, serving smaller dessert portions with added fruit. Pastry chefs are encouraged to take on the challenge of creating sweets that centre around whole grains, nuts, dark chocolate, coffee, fruit, healthy oils, yoghurt, a small amount of dairy and eggs and — where appropriate — minimal amounts of alcohol, sugar and/or refined carbohydrates. 

At J D Wetherspoon, it’s about recognising the influence they hold as one of the UK’s biggest pub brands and using it for good. “Wetherspoon is a ‘tall poppy’ in the pub and wider hospitality industry,” says Michelle Morris, Quality Assurance Manager at Wetherspoon. “If we raise our bar then usually, over time, the industry raises the overall bar, which can only be good.” Their menus offer customers variety and choice when it comes to nutritional and dietary preferences and provide transparency so that they can make informed decisions about their food. Wetherspoon’s commitment to setting ambitious, measurable targets is particularly impressive. These include reducing sugar, fat and salt across individual dishes and categories; working towards maximum calorie levels for each menu category; and providing menu options for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, low-calorie (<500 kcal) and low-fat (<5%).  

… and more of the good 

It’s not all about what should be removed from your dishes and menus; adding more healthy ingredients is another important way forward. This can include a deliberate focus on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, pulses and legumes. 

LIMANÁ in Peru is a brilliant example of what it means to feed people well. Founder Anita Belaunde decided to open a restaurant as a means of showing people that it is possible to enjoy delicious, high-quality and healthy meals, while minimising environmental impact and eliminating the need for animal suffering. Anita has built nutrition into the heart of the restaurant, and every dish is created with both flavour and nourishment in mind. The focus is on natural, whole and plant-based foods influenced by Peruvian food heritage.  

At Apricity, UK, 50% of the menu is plant-based as a matter of course. Grains and pulses feature heavily on the menus here, used as garnishes as well as the main components of both plant-based and non-plant-based dishes. The team sources a wide selection of British-grown, organic pulses and grains from Hodmedods; lesser-known varieties like badger peas, yellow peas and yellow pea flour are familiar favourites in the restaurant, and every guest is greeted with a doughnut made from chickpeas and stuffed with fermented fava beans. “There are many known health benefits in consuming more grains and pulses, including lowering the risk of heart disease and diabetes,” says Head Chef Eve Seemann. With these benefits in mind, the kitchen team is constantly working on new recipes that include pulses and grains. “One recent example is a new tofu-style mix we’ve developed using pink flamingo peas.”  

At ROVI by Ottolenghi, UK, the focus is on well considered and beautifully executed vegetable-first cooking. “We are intentional at putting vegetables at the centre of our menus and using the best ingredients we can,” says Neil Campbell, Executive Head Chef at Ottolenghi. “Feeding people well is core to how we think about food. It’s embedded in the values of Ottolenghi and it’s the way we’ve always done things. From the start, we’ve focused on bold flavours, balance and cooking with care […] it’s about putting the guest first, with food that feels good to eat.” 

For Rosewood Phuket, the ethos is firmly on ‘good fat’, not ‘low fat’, with menus focusing on healthy unsaturated fats from non-hydrogenated plant oils, nuts, nut butters, avocados and fish, while completely avoiding trans fats from partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. They’re also making whole, intact grains the new norm. Menus focus on slow-metabolising whole grains — intact, cut and never milled — from brown rice to quinoa, used creatively across a variety of dishes.  

Looking for inspiration on how to incorporate more whole grains into your offering? To promote their many health benefits, EUFIC has launched its #SwitchToWholeGrains campaign, a four-week challenge that supports chefs and home cooks to make healthier choices. Through weekly challenges, delicious whole grain recipes created by chefs from the LIFE Climate Smart Chefs project and practical tips, this challenge guides and inspires you to incorporate more whole grains into your menus. 

Creating better kids’ menus 

With eating out a more regular part of daily life than ever before, restaurants have a crucial role to play in shaping the food habits of future generations, too. It’s important that we wield our influence in a positive way to help children develop positive and healthy relationships with food, laying the foundations for a healthy, balanced diet that carries them into adulthood. 

Wahaca (UK) focuses on whole food ingredients, leveraging the innately playful, tactile nature of Mexican food to appeal to its little customers. “For me, it has to start with cooking whole foods from scratch,” says Founder and CEO Thomasina Miers. “We always add elements of fresh ingredients, whether our tomato salsa or home-made guacamole which we make daily and always goes down well or fresh vegetables to fill the tortillas. “We like to offer lots of different fillings for the tacos so that the young can experiment with texture, colour and flavour and build their own tacos, making it hands on and fun.” 

Apricity even offers a five-course ‘Culinary Kids' Tasting Menu‘. Created especially for children, this menu has been designed to be adventurous yet accessible, helping them to expand their tastebuds and to learn more about the stories behind their food.  

At J D Wetherspoon, a formal policy demands that they monitor calorie, salt and sugar levels in all food and drinks specifically marketed at children and provide a children’s menu offering credible healthier choices, with controlled levels of salt, added sugar, saturated fat and total fat. They also support and promote the ‘five-a-day’ message for fruit and vegetables – all children’s meals are served with two portions of vegetable or a side salad, plus a fruit portion. Improvements to their children’s menu led to Wetherspoon receiving first place in the ‘Out to Lunch’ league table, compiled independently by the Soil Association; among the scoring criteria are healthy options, food quality, value, sustainability and provenance.  

Find more inspiration for healthy kids' menus here! 

Pouring great alcohol-free options 

With the number of sober and sober-curious customers on the rise, it makes good business sense to make sure your low- and no-alcohol offering is interesting and appealing. This also helps to support a cultural evolution in which alcohol is not necessarily a central part of every social event — which is indisputably better for public health. 

At ROVI, their no- and low-alcohol drinks are just as well-considered as the cocktail list. “If someone’s not drinking alcohol, they still get a drink that’s seasonal, layered and interesting,” says Andy Frantzeskos, Head Chef at ROVI. At Kitchen Table, UK, they even have a full ‘soft pairing’ with a drink to match every course of their tasting menu. 

Read our tips for creating a special alcohol-free offering!

Promoting indigenous foods 

For many countries and regions that have felt the impact of colonisation on their cuisines, reclaiming traditional, indigenous ingredients and cooking methods can be an important part of taking back control over both local narrative and public health. 

At Chef’s Garden in Puerto Rico, Owner and Chef Josiah Hernández has a deliberate focus on heritage foods: ingredients like tropical tubers, rice and beans, and traditional cooking techniques like slow stewing. The kitchen makes everything from scratch, taking a quiet stand against the highly processed diets that were introduced by US colonisation. “We even smoke and dry our own peppers instead of using processed chipotle sauces. Our food is incredibly flavourful, but leaves you feeling light and satisfied.”  

Similarly, at LIMANÁ, every dish includes at least one native Peruvian ingredient, such as quinoa, cacao, corn or chilli — a tribute to the country’s incredible biodiversity. 

Nudges in the right direction 

As outlined in the WRI’s 2024 ‘Food Service Playbook for Promoting Sustainable Food Choices’, food environments like restaurants can make healthier, more sustainable foods the easy choice for customers through simple, subtle psychological ‘nudges’. These can range from menu design and language to tweaks in placement and pricing. 

In a good example of ‘nudging’, J D Wetherspoon updated the way in which accompaniment choices for main meals are listed on the menu. For example, the side dishes available for a steak are now listed in the following order: salad, Mediterranean salad, jacket potato, mashed potato, then chips. “The change was made to highlight and encourage healthier options,” says Michelle. “Previously, chips had always been listed first.” 

At the University of Edinburgh, they’ve re-engineered their menus with health in mind, using a food strategy built on positive changes ‘made by stealth’. The focus is on providing familiar foods such as curry or risotto, but using ingredients which are good for both physical and mental wellbeing. 55% of options on all the University menus are now vegetarian or plant-based, and they’re continuing to develop new meat-free products as demand increases. This gradual, consumer-led approach has been working well, and the team has found nudging behaviours to be highly effective at influencing consumer behaviour. 

Interested in using nudge theory to guide better choices? Coolfood (WRI's initiative to curb diet-related emissions by 25% by 2030) has created a ‘Quick Start Guide for Food Service’ – a distilled, actionable version of the Playbook designed to help restaurants and other F&B businesses to put theory into action and begin implementing these techniques as quickly as possible. You can find the Quick Start Guide here. 

Sharing the story 

Bringing customers on board is a key part of any sustainability endeavour. At LIMANÁ, staff are trained in the basic principles of nutrition so they can speak confidently with diners about what’s on the plate and why it matters. Beyond the table, LIMANÁ opens up space for further dialogue by hosting free talks and cooking masterclasses to share the pillars of healthy eating. This helps people to make informed choices and cook better at home, spreading the positive impact further. 

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