Olympic training regimens are the stuff of legend, but here’s one you probably haven’t heard of: spend 18 hours a day for five years researching every fresh, healthy, comestible, and delicious recipe the host nation can muster—and then be ready to serve them all at lightning speed.
It’s a new sport, launched by an intrepid group of food planners charged with feeding the athletes—and everyone else—at the London-based Games of the XXX Olympiad, which kick off officially today. Over a total of 27 days, 14 million meals will be consumed at 44 venues in and around the city. The athletes alone will pack away 1.2 million of them—65,000 on the busiest day.
The food for what has been described as the largest peacetime catering operation in the world is measured in tonnes (2,200 pounds), as in: a staggering 330 tonnes of fruits and “veg”; 100 tonnes of meat; 21 tonnes of cheese. But that’s the warm-up. If a “Food Vision” meticulously plotted under the auspices of the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) succeeds, it will lead the way to a much bigger prize: a new standard for the procurement and consumption of healthy, regionally sourced, environmentally sustainable food in London and beyond.
Beating the nearest rival in the Olympic competition was a snap. At the Beijing Summer Games in 2008, it was a toss-up which was worse, the quality of the food or the fact that it kept running out.
“We were very keen not to repeat the culinary disaster of Beijing,” says Rosie Boycott, chair of Mayor Boris Johnson’s London Food directive, which is part of a tightly coordinated network harnessing Olympian muscle for the long-term future of the city’s and, it is hoped, the nation’s, food system. “But that was just the beginning. Back in 2007 the organizers determined that this was an unprecedented opportunity to look at our diets and our health, at our catering industry, at the state of our farms, and to commit to a long-term plan for good food and environmental stewardship.”
“Traditionally, the Games have appointed a master caterer, but we wanted to involve lots of different providers—about 800 in all—and have most everyone adhere to a set of high standards,” says David Russell of the strategic food consultancy The Russell Partnership, which was charged with shaping those standards and enshrining them in a document that virtually all participants have pledged to follow.
The new rules of the Games dictate that much of the food served—including but not limited to fruits, vegetables, milk, cheeses, and meats—will be sourced in the U.K.; animal products will meet or exceed a “Red Tractor” benchmark (an independent food seal of approval launched by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2000); fish will be demonstrably sustainable; cage-free hens will provide the eggs; milk and chicken will be organic; and drinking water will be free.
“Local and regional foods are a big part of the plan,” says Boycott, and indeed the Olympian PR wires have been buzzing with tales of Welsh lamb, Leicestershire Stilton pie, Perthshire (Scotland) charcuterie, Isle of Wight tomatoes, and sourdough bread from the London borough of Tower Hamlets, baked in a brick oven lined with peat from the nearby Thames. (It is also duly noted that the U.K.’s cultural diversity will be showcased in a wide range of other cuisines, and particular dietary needs—such as vegan and gluten-free—will be met.)
From their earliest discussions with food providers, the planners aimed high, envisioning a “greenest Games yet” (with a zero-waste-to-landfill scheme) whose legacy would be the ultimate transformation of the U.K. food system from increasingly processed and prepackaged to fresh and more local fare.
“One of the greatest shocks at our first meeting with Olympic food partners was to realize the scale of the operation—it takes a little while for 14 million meals to sink in,” says Russell. “As we explained our goals, there was a degree of anxiety and skepticism,” which might well be an understatement, given that the group assembled for an early taste of the Food Vision had never before been called together to collaborate. In the spirit of inclusion, food-service behemoths like Sodexo and Aramark, the National Farmers Union, giant supermarket chains and small, local producers were all invited. The nonprofit advocacy group Sustain engaged in dialogue with Olympic sponsors such as “worldwide partner” McDonalds. “We started out not completely aligned,” says Russell, “but it was clear that the Games were the ideal catalyst to create lasting change.”
Not everyone got what they wanted, at least this time around. In deference to the sponsors (including Cadbury and Coca-Cola), LOCOG decreed that no other food enterprise would be permitted to use its brand name or even advertise its involvement, relegating a host of eager, homegrown providers to grumbling anonymity. The planners found themselves confronting a potential calamity of far greater proportions, however, when McDonalds initially declared that it expected to have a blanket monopoly on potatoes—fries being a backbone of its own brand identity. “That was a surprise,” says Boycott, “and a bit of a conundrum. But then it was gently explained to them that fish and chips are akin to mother’s milk in Britain.” In the end, McDonalds relented, and a thousand spuds will bloom.
“A happy outcome of all this work has been the readiness of big players like McDonalds to embrace the standards,” adds Boycott, noting that the fast-food chain has also agreed to source its chicken in the U.K. and even to manage the supply chain for all the milk served. “The thing that nobody knows yet is, will McDonalds continue to follow the Olympic food standards afterward? We’re waiting to hear, and hoping.” (McDonald’s did not respond to a request for comment.)
“We want to keep the momentum building,” says Kath Dalmeny, policy director of Sustain, who works with Boycott on London food initiatives and is in charge of the fish that will accompany the resurrected chips at the Games. The 2014 Commonwealth Games will be held in Glasgow, she points out, and Russell is already working on plans for the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. “What’s most important now is what happens after August 12,” Dalmeny says. With her help, one outgrowth of Olympic food fervor has already been launched—Sustainable Fish City, a campaign to have London set a worldwide metropolitan standard for the purchase of sustainable fish and the protection of marine environments.
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