A nutrition education programme, developed by Danone Ireland in partnership with FoodCloud, is helping community and voluntary organisations turn surplus food into nutritious meals
Danone Ireland is delivering a nutrition education programme to support FoodCloud’s network of community and voluntary organisations (CVOs), to meet the evolving needs of service users through tailored nutritional guidance and recipes.
FoodCloud enables over 700 community partners in Ireland to access nutritious food, helping organisations to reduce costs, and support more people than ever before. These organisations use surplus food to provide meals or food parcels to share with breakfast and after school clubs, or directly with service users for personal use.
Danone is the first company in Ireland to support FoodCloud’s charity and community groups with a nutrition education programme, sharing tailored recipes, nutritional information and delivering expert-led webinars to over 700 community partners. In the last year, Danone’s registered nutritionists and dietitians developed 12 nutritionally balanced recipes to help community groups make the most of surplus produce.
In a recent FoodCloud survey over one fifth of respondent CVOs listed people 65+ as the primary users of their service. Most recently, Danone’s expert team has been working to support FoodCloud’s community partners in addressing the specific nutritional needs of this age cohort, offering practical advice for good nutrition and healthy ageing.
Although important at every stage of life, good nutrition becomes increasingly crucial as we age, as changes that naturally occur can affect our food intake and how nutrients are absorbed and used by the body. Failure to maintain good nutrition can lead to malnutrition, whereby a person's diet does not contain enough nutrients to meet the demands of their body.
Currently,145,000 people are estimated to be malnourished or at risk of malnutrition. Older people, particularly those with conditions like cancer, dementia or neurological conditions like MS, MND or CVA, are at the highest risk, yet malnutrition is largely preventable with most cases relatively simple and inexpensive to treat, especially if detected early.
Understanding the varying needs of the different demographics that use the service can help CVOs recognise and address the nutritional needs of service users.
Commenting, Killian Barry, Managing Director of Danone Ireland said, “As a health-focused company with a mission to bring health, through food, to as many people as possible, this partnership provides a unique opportunity to extend our expertise to help the wider community and deliver a meaningful impact. Like FoodCloud, Danone is committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goal to halve food waste from farm to fork by 2030. We are proud to work with FoodCloud on this collective mission while addressing food insecurity and meeting the nutritional needs of vulnerable communities across the country. As one of the largest B Corp’s in Ireland, we are committed to giving back to the community through meaningful partnerships.”
According to FoodCloud’s latest annual charity survey, 70% of respondents experienced increased demand for their services in 2023, with almost a quarter (23%) unable to meet this increase. Almost three-quarters (73%) expect demand to increase even further throughout 2024.
Danone has worked with FoodCloud since 2020, and, during this time, supported the redistribution of 138 tonnes of surplus food, equivalent to 329,567 meals and 443 tonnes of CO2 avoided. Receiving surplus food is critical in enabling community partners to provide a wider range of produce to service users as they look to stretch already limited resources. FoodCloud’s survey data has also shown that 32% of respondents were able to reallocate funding as a result of surplus food donations received from producers and retailers.
Aoibheann O’Brien, co-founder and Director of Development and Innovation at FoodCloud commented "FoodCloud's partnership with Danone is an important step for us in achieving our vision of a world where no good food goes to waste. In addition to providing surplus food to our community partners, FoodCloud, in conjunction with Danone's registered dietitians and nutritionists, offer help and support to our partners in making the most of surplus food and preparing nutritionally balanced meals for their service users.”
In addition to sharing recipes and nutritional guidance with FoodCloud’s community partners, Danone has donated over 200 volunteer hours towards the partnership in the last 12 months.
About FoodCloud
FoodCloud is a tech-based, non-profit, social enterprise (All Ireland Sustainability Awards Winner, 2023).
Their vision is a world where no good food goes to waste and the organisation is tackling the twin issues of food waste and food insecurity to fight climate breakdown and poverty. They do this by redistributing surplus food from the food industry to a network of charity and community partners through their two food redistribution solutions: FoodHubs coordinate donations and redistribution of larger volumes of surplus food and Foodiverse, their tech platform that connects food businesses with local community groups to redistribute surplus food. Using these two solutions FoodCloud reduces food waste and emissions globally.
To date, FoodCloud has redistributed 114,000 tonnes of surplus food internationally. This is the equivalent of more than 272.5 million meals and over 360,000 tonnes of CO2 avoided. For more information, please visit https://food.cloud.