Which? rates healthy food at UK tourist attractions
Monday, 18 Aug 2008 10:41
Families planning summer and bank holiday weekend day trips to UK tourist attractions such as Alton Towers should have more healthy choices when it comes to the food on offer, according to Which? Holiday.
The independent consumer publication inspected eight of the UK's top visitor attractions and found that the availability of healthy food varied considerably.
Which? registered dieticians found that Alton Towers and Tate Modern performed well, with a range of healthy food choices.
However, Tate Modern was less impressive when it came to clearly identifying healthy foods.
Blackpool Pleasure Beach rated badly, with very few healthy food options and very little nutritional information available.
Other attractions, such as the Giant's Causeway in Ireland and York Minster did have a small number of healthy food options, but these were not easily identifiable.
Which? Holiday also conducted a survey of members visiting UK tourist attractions in the past year and found that just one in three (29 per cent) thought there was a good choice of food available.
Nearly two thirds (58 per cent) of respondents thought that the food on offer at visitor attractions was not very healthy.
Lorna Cowan, editor of Which? Holiday commented on the study: "It's great to see that some attractions, such as Alton Towers, are making a real effort to promote healthy foods.
"But healthy options at these attractions are often not very well labelled, which can let them down.
"We're not saying that treats should be completely out of bounds on a day out, just that suitable healthy alternatives should be more easily available for people who want them."