Enel and Welfood, all for health

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The proof of the pudding is in the eating. To promote personal well-being and to enable staff to feel at the top of their game while at work, our People Care and Diversity Management Italy division has launched a programme of training seminars on nutrition and health for Enel employees in collaboration with Welfood, a consulting firm for the corporate sector.

Three topics will be addressed during the 2-hour workshops for groups of 40-45 people. The sessions began this year in September and are due to run until June 2019. The first “How we function: food as a source of health” introduces the science supporting a healthy diet and outlines the mechanisms of human metabolism. The second, entitled “Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Let’s build our own balance,” explains the right way to achieve a proper balance between foods, providing guidance for both individual meals and the foods to be eaten at various moments during the day. The final meeting focuses on two “enemies” of well-being, “Sugars or fats: a resource or problem?”, and outlines the differences between saturated and unsaturated fats, sugars and carbohydrates, and in which foods we can find them.

The project has involved staff from eight Enel offices, two in Rome, and the others in Turin, Naples, Milan, Bologna, Palermo and Mestre. In addition to the theoretical basis, the lessons include initiatives to design balanced meals in each phase of the day, but also group activities to identify good eating practices, leaving ample room for questions and sharing personal experiences.

The first meeting, held in Rome, presented some data from Istat (the Italian National Institute of Statistics) that highlights why we should devote more attention to our daily diet. In Italy, in the over 50 age group, half of the men and 37% of the women are overweight. Moreover, between the ages of 55 and 59, only 9% eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, as recommended by the World Health Organization. What’s more, the proportion of people aged over 50 who do not exercise is high at about 80%.

Together with a proper diet, sport is still the best ally for good health, avoiding active ageing and maintaining psychological and physical well-being. This scenario includes yoga and Pilates activities, which, thanks to an Enel initiative, have been made available since the beginning of the year during working hours at some of the Group’s offices in Italy.

The advice of the famous motivational speaker Jim Rohn continues to apply, because health is also a fundamental value for Enel: “Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live.”