Quality and nutrition

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• Quality and nutrition
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Nutrition

 

 Nutrition : a strategic priority

Packed with flavor, vitamins and mineral salts, vegetables are a pleasure to eat and help maintain good health.
Bonduelle uses research and development to improve the nutritional qualities of its products every day.
The initiatives undertaken by the Fondation Louis Bonduelle are an extension of these efforts, making nutrition a true social commitment for the Group

  

Nutrition is a Group-wide subject at Bonduelle, one shared at all levels of the company and beyond, thanks to the creation of the Fondation Louis Bonduelle.
Every day, Bonduelle staff work hard to perfect processes, varieties, farming methods, lag times and recipes, etc.
This involvement is accompanied by Group training, innovation, audit and research programs. In 2009, Bonduelle’s in-house university launched a new nutrition kit for employees. This initiative complements the specific training programs made available to the marketing and quality control teams. In the product innovation arena, the marketing departments have taken steps to promote the health benefits of future products,through the “active health” program.

 

A nutritional audit of the existing Bonduelle brand products sparked a number of reformulations that resulted in considerable reductions in salt and fat content.
The project entered its second phase in 2009, with an application destined for new products. Lastly, the Bonduelle Group is participating in and heading up a number of basic research programs to advance understanding of the impacts vegetables have in several areas, including dietary habits, bioavailability of nutrients, pathologies and syndromes. The Bonduelle Group’s commitment to nutrition reaches beyond its own activities, with the creation in 2004 of the Fondation Louis Bonduelle, which promotes long-term initiatives to improve dietary habits.

 

Fondation Louis Bonduelle contributes to fight against obesity

In association with the European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG), which federates more than 150 scientists involved in the fight against childhood obesity, in 2009 the Fondation Louis Bonduelle established a prize recognizing the best work performed in this area, which is a veritable plague: in European countries, between 15% and 35% of all children are either overweight or obese, and the numbers are doubling every fifteen years. In addition to its direct impacts on health (including diabetes and cardio-vascular diseases), obesity also has psychological repercussions. In September 2009, the first ECOG and Louis Bonduelle Prize, along with 10,000 euros in cash, was awarded to the Hungarian team headed up by Professor Molnár, of the University of Pécs. The prize
was awarded in recognition of a 30 year study of children.

 

Second Fondation Louis Bonduelle Encounters

Which vegetables do children know – and like – best? How do they like to eat them?

The second Fondation Louis Bonduelle Convention provided an opportunity to analyze the relationship children have with vegetables.
Nearly 200 people (scientists, doctors, dieticians, etc.) participated in this get-together, along with David Morizet, a young researcher whose thesis – an original study of the eating preferences of 8- to 11-year olds – is sponsored by Bonduelle and the Institut Paul Bocuse.
During the convention, the nutritionist Béatrice de Reynal also presented the link that exists between television and the spread of childhood obesity, while Sophie Nicklaus, head of research at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research in Dijon reminded participants of the importance of the early years of child development in building food preferences.
At the end of the day, the 4th Louis Bonduelle Research Prize was awarded. In 2009, the prize went to Géraldine Comoretto, a young researcher whose work attempts to determine to what extent a child’s diet can be a vehicle for social development and the construction of a child’s self image.

 

 

Quality

 

Supplying healthy flawless products

 

Bonduelle’s quality policy is guarantor of the Group’s reputation and long-term prospects. As such, it includes a “nutritional” component that allows it to offer consumers products that are not only as safe as possible, but also the most well-balanced from a nutritional standpoint.

 

Organization

 

The quality control departments are responsible for transforming the wishes expressed by customers and the marketing department into technical specifications, for managing any quality shortfalls while maintaining constant contact with the production plants and ensuringcompliance with the certification programs and all associated audits, both within the Group and with Bonduelle’s corporate partners. The quality control departments are also charged with managing complaints and for representing the Group, notably in relations with the interprofessional associations to which Bonduelle belongs. In 2008-09, the Group’s efforts to achieve continuous quality improvement resulted in the launch of a reorganization of the quality control departments.
Whereas these entities had previously been incorporated into each of the Group’s subsidiaries, they have progressively been incorporated into a new type of structure - the quality control shared services center.

 

New investment

This reorganization was accompanied by additional capital expenditure to ensure better risk control, through the incorporation of optical sorters and metal detectors into all production lines at Group plants. A number of production facilities had their certification renewed during the year just ended, including ISO 9001 V 2000, the International Food Standard, the British Retail Consortium’s Global Standard for Food Safety and the Écocert “organic” certification awarded to certain plants for their product transformation operations.
This trend toward certification shows that the Bonduelle Group’s quality policy does not just mean checking the product, it includes taking all appropriate measures.
The effective pursuit of the Group’s improvement plans and its capital expenditures have resulted in a decrease of around 8% in the number of complaints received in all of our technological segments. This clear improvement shows the effectiveness of Bonduelle’s choice of investments in the continuous improvement of the quality of its products, in accordance with consumer expectations.

 

Sensorial and nutritional qualities of Bonduelle products

 

In order to consistently offer consumers the tastiest recipes, Bonduelle is continuing to perform sensorial and gustatory analyses of six different types of gustatory sensations: sweetness, saltiness, acidity, sourness, bitterness and astringency. In 2008-09 the Group also continued to improve the nutritional quality of its products.
Through a series of analyses and by controlling the variables involved in the cooking process, the nutrition department was able to demonstrate that the nutritional value of pre-fried and grilled vegetables (used in processed vegetable recipes or sold as is to foodservice customers) is very high, and that they are high in vitamin content and contain only low levels of neo-formed contaminants. Moreover, the nutritional audit initiated in 2008 was concluded in 2009. More than 90% of all branded products met the nutritional standards the Group set for itself, in addition to complying with all regulatory constraints. Lastly, the Group continued its efforts to reduce sodium content, and the reformulations already carried out have resulted in a reduction of saturated fatty acids in certain processed recipes.