Is Breakfast The Secret To Better Health And Safety?

Around 2 in 5 adults in the UK regularly skip breakfast, according to the BBC Good Food Nation survey.

The 2015 “BBC Good Food Nation” survey, which was administered among 5,046 adults aged 16+, showed that 31% of those surveyed skipped breakfast.

Of course, people should be able to choose when, and what, they eat. So maybe people are skipping breakfast because they are not hungry, or didn't fancy it? But no, one of the most common reasons people give for skipping breakfast is that they "didn't have time".

When is breakfast skipping most likely to happen? Probably during the week when time is tight in the morning as you rush to beat the traffic and get to work on time.

Does it matter if over 30% of your team is skipping breakfast?

Is how your team manage their time, their morning, and their meals outside of work any of your business?

Well, as we are about to discover, breakfast can have a big impact on both the safety and the health of an individual at work. And if people in your team are skipping breakfast because work demands mean they don't have the time for it, maybe it's something you can help with.

Making breakfast a priority could benefit your workforce and your business.

Breakfast and safety

You might think breakfast is good for your health (more on that shortly), but would it surprise you to know that breakfast is also good for your safety?

During construction work for London 2012, the Olympic Delivery Authority noticed a worrying accident trend. During the hour before lunch, accident levels increased.

Can skipping breakfast put you at greater risk of an accident at work?

Does hunger cause accidents?

Yes! If you are working in a high-risk environment, or doing a safety-critical task, you need to be alert. And hunger is a distraction.

If you're hungry, it's hard to stay focused. Food is your fuel. Hunger can quickly lead to low energy levels and fatigue. If that's not bad enough, you can lose patience and become irritable. You get "hangry" (hunger angry).

If you're too busy thinking about lunch because you skipped breakfast and you're running on empty, it's a recipe for disaster. You can't concentrate, getting distracted by your rumbling tummy. In this state, you're more likely to rush what you are doing and be less alert. This is when mistakes happen. This is how accidents happen.

So how can you fix this? Because breakfast usually happens at home, and that's outside of your workplace, and outside of your control.

Well, what if you brought breakfast to the workplace? If some workers don't have time for breakfast before work, what if you provide breakfast at work? It worked for the Olympic builders! As part of the solution, workers were offered porridge and it helped fix the morning accident problem.*

The workers were coming into work for three hours suffering really low blood sugar. We had canteens offering porridge for £1 and accidents in the morning went down.

This is a winning health and safety strategy because it:

• Doesn't cost the business anything as costs are covered by charging £1
• Saves the business money because of the costs associated with having accidents
• Increases worker happiness because they are no longer hungry in the morning
• Improves worker health which is good for the worker and good for the business (more on this in the next section)

And it wouldn't be a far reach to suggest that improved concentration wouldn't just have health and safety benefits. The project would also have more productive workers with higher energy levels in the morning. This could mean:

• Better safety
• Higher quality work
• Increased productivity

Breakfast and health

Notice how the Olympic Delivery Authority offered porridge for breakfast? Not a Full English breakfast fry-up or a greasy bap. Porridge is both warm (useful when you're working outside on a cold construction site in the morning), and it's healthy.

The breakfast strategy wasn't just about reducing accidents, it was also because more than a quarter of the workforce was obese.

With such a wide range of breakfast foods on offer, not all of the options available are healthy. Although there has been an increased awareness around the sugar content in breakfast cereals, and healthier alternatives, workers pushed for time in the morning are less likely to spend the time cooking up a bowl of porridge at home. If they find time for breakfast at all, they are more likely to go for something quick and easy, which doesn't always equal healthy.

One of the latest statistics that is giving many healthcare professionals real cause for concern is that British children under 10 years of age are currently consuming more than 50% of the recommended daily allowance of sugar at breakfast (c. 11 g) in the form of sugary cereals, drinks, and spreads.

Of course, a healthy diet involves more than just breakfast. But, while you might not be able to make all the food choices for your workers, you can offer them a healthy start to their day.

By promoting healthy choices, or at least making healthy choices available, you can encourage workers to make positive changes in other areas.

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Breakfast might not be the only health and safety measure you need on-site, and it's certainly not the only thing you will need to prevent accidents. But it shows how the health of your team and factors outside of work can impact safety on site. And something as simple as a bowl of porridge can be the start of big health and safety improvements.

If you're looking for other ways you can improve health and safety, here are 11 Free Ways To Improve Construction Site Safety.

*There were many excellent health and safety strategies involved in London 2012 and breakfast was not the only strategy. The team invested in creating a positive health and safety culture from organisation commitments, developing safe behaviour and attitudes, employee engagement, providing resources and developing systems.