Food & Health Alliance

For many people, burgers epitomise the type of junk food that is the enemy of healthy eating.

However, for Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) – the body that supports and promotes the red meat industry – food such as burgers and sausages can be developed to a healthier specification.

QMS has been working with a number of meat producers in 2009  to produce a range of processed meat products containing reduced fat and salt. It is also hoping it will prove attractive, not only to school meals planners, but to other public sector areas, such as hospitals and prisons.

QMS Communications Director, Louise Welsh, says the idea came to her after reading an article last year where a Glasgow councillor bemoaned the fact that school meals had become less popular since schools followed Jamie Oliver’s lead and started producing healthier options.

The situation was so bad, he added, they might have to consider putting burgers back on the menu just to make sure children signed up for school meals.

‘That irritated me,’ says Louise, ‘because actually, depending on how they’re made, burgers can be a very nutritious part of a healthy balanced diet.’

As a result, she began looking into the idea of producing healthier, reformulated meat that would be attractive to the school meals buyers and might act as a ‘hook’ for more children to start eating school meals again. 

Since late last year, QMS has been working with eight Scottish meat companies to reformulate a number of red meat products, including beef and lamb burgers, pork, beef, haggis, black pudding and bacon, to ensure they have lower salt and fat content while retaining their taste and essential constituents.

The work, which is supported by Scottish Enterprise funding, has taken place in conjunction with Food Innovation@ Abertay in Dundee. In June, it came to fruition when QMS launched a ‘toolkit’ to enable all meat producers to develop healthier red meat products by reducing fat and salt levels. 

‘For some producers, the new guidelines may not require any changes,’ says Louise. ‘Others may need to ‘tweak’ a few things to meet the suggested requirements but the end result should be good news.’

‘If we can produce tasty burgers that people will like and also tick the box of meeting demands for lower fat and salt, that must be a good thing,’ she says.

She also believes it could lead to a significant increase in school meals uptake. ‘Popular staples like burgers and sausages could play an important role in helping schools.  At the same time, our meat companies get the chance of putting meat produced in Scotland on more people’s plates.’