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The NACC Podcast | National Association of Care Catering

The NACC Podcast | National Association of Care Catering

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Welcome to the NACC Podcast, the official podcast of The National Association of Care Catering.


With episodes coming out fortnightly, we interview guests every episode to learn more about care catering, changes that are happening in the sector, latest news, events and much more.


We will cover everything surrounding the dynamic and growing area of care catering.


If you are looking to learn more about the positive impact nutrition, hydration and mealtimes have on the physical and emotional health and wellbeing of the elderly and vulnerable in care settings, then you have found the right podcast!


Hosted and presented by, Rob Spence.



The National Association of Care Catering (NACC) unites, supports and represents everyone working in and associated with catering in the UK care sector. It is recognised as a respected source of information and opinion for the dynamic and growing area of care catering.

For more than 30 years, it has been committed to raising standards of care catering and championing the positive impact nutrition, hydration and mealtimes have on the physical and emotional health and wellbeing of the elderly and vulnerable in care settings.




To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/




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  • A Dish Is Finished When There's Nothing Left to Take Away: James Brown on Judging, Food Trends, and Why Care Catering Is Harder Than Anyone Thinks

    A Dish Is Finished When There's Nothing Left to Take Away: James Brown on Judging, Food Trends, and Why Care Catering Is Harder Than Anyone Thinks
    2026/06/30
    A Dish Is Finished When There's Nothing Left to Take Away: James Brown on Judging, Food Trends, and Why Care Catering Is Harder Than Anyone ThinksJames Brown grew up in Cornwall collecting lobsters from the harbour and running them up to the kitchen. He's since worked in Michelin-starred restaurants, overseen multi-site chains, and is now Group Executive Chef for UK and Ireland at Unilever Food Solutions — travelling to China, New York and Singapore to research global food trends, and judging competitions from Ireland to the NACC Care Chef of the Year.In this episode he talks about what makes care catering harder than any other sector, what separates a great competition entry from an average one, and why if you're on the fence about entering, you should just go for it.SHOW NOTESJames Brown started cooking because his mum was at work and he needed money during the school summer holidays in Cornwall. He got the bug, started skipping lessons for shifts, went to catering college, and built a career that took him from a brasserie and grill by the harbour through Michelin-starred kitchens, high-volume casual dining groups, and eventually a role at Restaurant Associates overseeing Citibank's UK and Ireland operations for Compass. Then a new baby, a move to the countryside, and an opportunity at Unilever Food Solutions that finally made sense of everything he'd done before.In this episode, host Rob Spence asks James what it's actually like to come into the care sector fresh — with no preconceptions but also no knowledge. His answer is honest and generous. He expected it to be simpler. What he found was that the demands placed on a care chef are phenomenally harder than anything he'd imagined: dietary requirements, modified textures, dysphagia diets, choking hazards, shrinking appetites, the need to pack calories into every mouthful. Chefs often working alone. And all of that alongside producing food that's genuinely delicious, culturally relevant, and increasingly reflective of a multicultural resident population that's starting to want authentic regional curries, not just shepherd's pie.It's that complexity, he says, that makes the Care Chef of the Year stand out as a competition. These chefs have to think about whether a dish can be purified without losing its identity, whether the provenance and sustainability of an ingredient holds up, whether the flavour will land for someone whose taste buds have diminished with age. And they think about all of that instinctively — it's ingrained. James finds himself learning as a judge every time.His judging advice to anyone entering is borrowed from fashion: a dish isn't finished when there's nothing more to add, it's finished when there's nothing left to take away.Everything on the plate must earn its place. And his encouragement to anyone sitting on the fence is simple — you're not really competing against anyone else. If you go in with a view to competing with yourself, you can't lose. You'll come out more organised, sharper under pressure, and part of a community that will stay with you.Subscribe wherever you listen — and if you're still umming and ahhing about entering the Care Chef of the Year, consider this your nudge.To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/A massive thank you to the Sponsors of the Care Chef of the Year:Unilever Food SolutionsLockhart Catering EquipmentRationalProcurement for CareThe Worshipful Company of CooksPowered by Paragon Creative Studios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    34 分
  • Simple, Well-Cooked Food Will Never Go Wrong: Marcus Appleton on Waste, Sustainability, and What the Judges Are Really Looking At

    Simple, Well-Cooked Food Will Never Go Wrong: Marcus Appleton on Waste, Sustainability, and What the Judges Are Really Looking At
    2026/06/16
    Simple, Well-Cooked Food Will Never Go Wrong: Marcus Appleton on Waste, Sustainability, and What the Judges Are Really Looking AtMost judges are watching the plate. Marcus Appleton is watching the bin. As waste management and sustainability judge for the NACC Care Chef of the Year — and a man who spent 37 years in the armed forces before becoming Deputy CEO of a 280-room hotel for veterans — Marcus brings a perspective on competition cookery that no one else in the building shares. In this episode he talks bins, budgets, seasonality, and why simple well-cooked food will beat a saffron-laced showstopper every time.SHOW NOTESMarcus Appleton joined the armed forces at school intending to stay a couple of years. Thirty-seven years later he left — having trained as a chef, moved into procurement and performance management, and eventually run the Union Jack Club in London, a 280-room hotel for veterans and serving members. He turned sixty around the time COVID arrived, stepped back from the role, and turned his attention to the Worshipful Company of Cooks, one of the City of London's oldest livery companies, whose roots go back to 1482 and whose mission — supporting the craft, developing the next generation, looking after those who fall on hard times — maps almost exactly onto what drives Marcus personally. He's now their smallest livery company, 75 members strong, and quietly one of the most active forces for good in the UK culinary world, funding everything from student raised beds in North London colleges to chef's jackets for the crew of HMS Duncan.In this episode, host Rob Spence asks Marcus about his role as the sustainability and waste judge for the Care Chef of the Year — and what emerges is a masterclass in thinking about food differently.Marcus doesn't watch the plate. He lifts the bin lid.He's looking for whether a chef understands the basics well enough to use everything: the fish skin and bones for stock, the vegetable peelings that could be roasted off, the excess that shouldn't exist if the menu was planned properly. He's clear that you can serve a maximum of four portions and plate your best three — anything more is wasteful, and anything hidden under a kitchen roll has been found before. But the stories he tells about competitors who came back a second year and met him with "you can check the bins anytime you want, boss" say everything about what the competition is actually for.On seasonality, budget and sustainability, Marcus is equally direct. Saffron in every dish blows your budget and tells him you haven't thought. Out-of-season produce costs more, arrives suboptimal, and shows a lack of imagination. Venison is sustainable and underused. Rabbit is everywhere and nobody buys it. Coffee grounds grow mushrooms at Blenheim Palace. Two care homes last year brought their own home-grown vegetables and herbs to the competition. Things are moving, slowly, in the right direction.His advice to anyone entering: play to your strengths, keep it simple, practice until things go wrong so you know how to fix them, and always build in fudge time. "Simple, well-cooked food will never go wrong," he says. "You can put a little bit of panache on it — but don't put yourself in jeopardy."Subscribe wherever you listen — and maybe have a look in your own bin before you do.To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/A massive thank you to the Sponsors of the Care Chef of the Year:Unilever Food SolutionsLockhart Catering EquipmentRationalProcurement for CareThe Worshipful Company of CooksPowered by Paragon Creative Studios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    43 分
  • Food Is So Much More Than the Nutrition It Contains: Alison Smith on Judging Nutrition in a Competition Kitchen

    Food Is So Much More Than the Nutrition It Contains: Alison Smith on Judging Nutrition in a Competition Kitchen
    2026/06/02
    Food Is So Much More Than the Nutrition It Contains: Alison Smith on Judging Nutrition in a Competition KitchenWhat does the nutrition judge actually look for when a care chef's dish lands in front of her? In this episode, Rob Spence sits down with Alison Smith, dietitian and nutritional judge for the NACC Care Chef of the Year. Alison pulls back the curtain on the judging process — what gets competitors marked down, what makes a dish genuinely stand out, and why the dessert might be the most nutritionally important element on the plate.SHOW NOTESAlison Smith never set out to be a dietitian. At eleven she wanted to be a vet, and she held onto that plan right up until her A-level grades made it impossible. What followed was a biology degree, a postgraduate diploma in dietetics, and a career spent almost entirely in the community rather than in hospitals — much of it focused on the nutritional needs of older adults living in care homes. It's an area that most dietitians, she admits, would run away from rather than towards. Alison ran towards it. It shows.In this episode, host Rob Spence asks Alison to answer a question she's never been asked before: how do you make nutrition sexy? Her answer gets to the heart of what she believes — that food isn't just fuel, it's memory, comfort, celebration and identity, and that enjoyment is not a guilty indulgence but an essential component of good nutrition. "You can be terribly worthy and eat all the right things, but not enjoy it at all," she says. "Our psychological health is just as important as our physical health." In a care setting, where a resident might eat only a few mouthfuls of main course but clear their dessert, that philosophy has very real consequences for how a chef designs a dish.On the judging side, Alison is refreshingly direct about what she's looking for — and what competitors get wrong. She's not scanning for individual micronutrients; she's looking at the whole picture. Are all the food groups represented? Is the protein actually there — not just assumed to be there? She recounts more than one occasion where a chef has cited vegan cheese as their protein source, only for the packet to reveal almost none. She's also watching for whether chefs are aware of the BDA's Care Home Digest, the first national food-based guidelines for care home caterers, produced jointly with NACC in 2024, and how they've used it.What she finds encouraging is the direction of travel. The old advice — add butter and cream to boost nutrition — is giving way to a more nuanced understanding of nutrient density. Skimmed milk powder, Greek yogurt, eggs, nuts, cheese: ingredients that add multiple nutrients, not just calories. And increasingly, chefs who genuinely think about modified texture — not as an afterthought, but as something that can still be beautiful, still be flavourful, still mean something to the person eating it.Her advice to anyone wavering about entering is to come with an open mind and ask for the feedback. "It's very rare to find people who only come once," she says. "Mostly chefs get the bug." The ones who eventually win have usually been through it two or three times — and you can see the difference each time they return.Subscribe wherever you listen — and share with anyone who thinks nutrition is the dull bit of cooking. Alison will change your mind.To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/A massive thank you to the Sponsors of the Care Chef of the Year:Unilever Food SolutionsLockhart Catering EquipmentRationalProcurement for CareThe Worshipful Company of CooksPowered by Paragon Creative Studios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    46 分
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