Danone Ireland partners with food security charity FoodCloud over nutrition education

The aim is to help charities and community groups around Ireland in making the most of surplus food and preparing nutritionally balanced meals for those who use their services.

During the three-year partnership, Danone will provide a nutrition education program as part of FoodCloud’s Comminity Support Program, which assists around 600 charities and community groups around Ireland. The initiative includes the provision of advice and support by the multi-national's registered dietitians and nutritionist, who will support the charity with an annual webinar and the provision of recipes and nutritional information.

FoodCloud was recently named Charity of the Year by the Charities Institute Ireland Excellence Awards. The organization was founded in 2013 and uses its network of charities and community groups to redistribute surplus food from the food industry across four European markets – the UK, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ireland. The charity says it has so far redistributed more than 81,000 tons of food – the equivalent of around 193 million meals – avoiding 260,000 tons of CO2-equivalent in the process.

Aoibheann O’Brien, partnerships director at FoodCloud, commented: “We are committed to not only ensuring that perfectly good food does not go to waste, but also supporting our community group partners to make the most of the surplus food they receive. We look forward to working with Danone to develop recipes that support our brilliant network of charity chef partners nationwide with new ideas on how to use the surplus food we provide.”

Killian Barry, MD at Danone Ireland, added: “Having worked with FoodCloud for a number of years, we wanted to evolve our partnership beyond providing surplus food, to better supporting the charities and community groups who receive it. As a health-focused company with a mission to nourish life, we have a team of in-house nutritionists and dietitians who can share their expertise with FoodCloud’s network. With this expanded partnership, we hope to help these charities and groups in a practical, meaningful way, at a time when it is most needed, and create a wider positive impact in terms of food and nutrition education.”