Food for Life Catering Mark

The Catering Mark is a robust framework and inspected award designed to help you make sure that your staff, visitor and patient food is ethical, sustainable and fresh, free from nasty additives and transfats and meets nutritional guidelines

How do the standards work?

The Bronze, Silver and Gold standards are set by an independent Standards Committee, which is made up of industry experts from a wide range of sectors.

• The Bronze Catering Mark has fixed standards. These focus on removing harmful additives and trans fats from the menu, and ensuring that the majority of food available is prepared freshly. They also focus on assurances that meat is traceable and from farms that adhere at least to minimum standards animal welfare.
• The Silver and Gold Standards are assessed on a points system, rewarding spend on ethical, environmentally friendly and local ingredients, and for actions that make healthy eating easier. 

More information can be found HERE

Food for Life Catering Mark briefing pack

Following the introduction last year of the first CQUIN to incentivise improvements in hospital food, and the recognition of the Food for Life Catering Mark as a route to improving food in hospitals, these FAQs have been compiled and written by the Food for Life Catering Mark team in response to questions from caterers, hospitals and commissioners, and reflects their best understanding of the hospital food CQUIN at this time.

These FAQs provide a brief overview of the hospital food CQUIN goal, broadly covering what it is, the incentives provided for achieving CQUIN goals, and how hospitals and commissioners can adopt it.

With the release of the Hospital Food Plan, this CQUIN will come to the fore and I urge you all to look at this route to further enhance the service you provide to Patients, Staff and Visitors.