Tag Archives: fruit

Food for thought: how the UK food strategy is trying to revolutionise the way we think about and access food

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Research has shown that healthy food choices are three times more expensive than unhealthy ones, food bank use is at it highest ever level and the NHS is anticipating significant struggles in long term treatment of people with conditions linked to obesity and unhealthy lifestyles, like cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

A forecast published in a report by the Food Foundation showed that if we continue at our current rate and type of food consumption 22% of children born in 2020 will be overweight or obese by age 5, rising to 46% by the time they reach age 21.

But the impact doesn’t stop there. The food system – agriculture, food production, distribution and retail combined – releases more greenhouse gases than any other sector apart from energy. In the UK, the food system accounts for a fifth of domestic emissions – but that figure rises to around 30% if we factor in the emissions produced by all the food we import.

The food we eat – and the way we produce it – is doing damage to both the environment and our health and the government is now trying to take steps to mitigate the damage, and improve our health and wellbeing in the process through the roll out of a national food strategy.

Fixing a broken system

Figures from the Trussell Trust show that between April 2020 and March 2021, a record 2.5 million emergency food parcels were given to people in crisis. The increasing use of foodbanks shows just how deeply entwined inequality, food and health are, and how important it is for a robust and equitable food strategy to be rolled out.

The Broken Plate 2021 report from the Food foundation provides an overview of the food system in the UK, looking across four main themes:

  • making healthier options more appealing;
  • making healthier options more affordable;
  • making healthier and more sustainable options more available; and
  • addressing inequalities in food so that everyone can have the chance to live longer, healthier lives.

In July 2021 the UK government published a review into how the food system in the UK works and the interventions that could be brought in to prevent the harms from what we eat and the way we eat. The plan sets out recommendations and a strategy for the future which focuses on food being equitable, accessible, healthier, and sustainable.

The recommendations cover a number of key themes:

  • escape the “junk food cycle”, including introducing a Salt and Sugar Reformulation Tax;
  • reduce diet-related inequality, including extending eligibility for free school meals;
  • make the best use of our land – including guaranteeing agricultural payments to help farmers transition to more sustainable land use; and
  • create a long term shift in food culture, including the development of a robust system of data collection and reporting to help monitor long term progress.

Inequality exacerbated by unequal access to food

One of the most pressing issues around food is its availability and its ability to exacerbate existing inequalities, particularly among disadvantaged groups. We have already seen that food bank use is high (disproportionately so among lower income groups) and that eating healthier food is more expensive than unhealthy food.

The shelf life of more unhealthy and highly processed food is also often longer, so it is easier to store, and food can be spread out and eaten across multiple days more easily. Processed foods, which are often higher in sugar, salt and trans fats (unhealthy fats) also often require less cooking (both in terms of heat energy required to cook them and knowledge of how to prepare them) which for people with reduced access to kitchens, experience of fuel poverty or limited knowledge of preparing food can be more convenient. Research consistently shows that people who fall into these groups are significantly more likely to come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and have experience of poverty.

Steps are being taken to try and improve access to healthier food for people living on lower incomes, including free school meals and (with a bit of persuasion from Marcus Rashford) a wider roll out to also offer meals during school holidays. The government also runs a voucher system for new parents to help them get access to fresh food like fruit and vegetables.

More recently there has also been discussion about the roll out of “food on prescription” services, both for those people on lower incomes and for those people who are at risk of medical complications or disease as a result of being overweight or obese.

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Sustainable as well as healthy

As has been made clear in the reports, food systems don’t just impact on us as individuals, they also have a significant impact on the environment. The changing climate is at the forefront of everyone’s mind, including multiple extreme weather events, the publication of an IPCC report on climate change, and the run up to COP26, due to be held in Glasgow. So the way we grow and process our food, and how this negatively impacts our environment is coming under greater scrutiny.

Currently, many practices are having a negative and detrimental impact on our environment across a number of areas including carbon emissions, water pollution, reduction in soil health, loss of biodiversity, land use/deforestation.

And commentators are now emphasising that our food system as well as being healthy and accessible should also be sustainable, with programmes developed to reduce food waste, support community-based agriculture schemes, help farmers to transition to more sustainable ways to farm and use land and stimulate demand for in season, sustainably grown, locally sourced food.

Final Thoughts

Food, and our relationship with it is becoming increasingly important, not only for our own personal health and wellbeing, but also for the health of communities more generally, and the health of our planet.

Sustainable, healthy and equitable food systems help to promote healthier choices and reduce our impact on the planet. And food can also play its part in helping to relieve other pressures on society, like food poverty, inequality and the rising use of food banks. Food on prescription services can help support people to make better choices and reduce the risk of diseases like cancer, heart disease, stroke and obesity.

In short, food is not just vital for life, but also for living well.

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If you enjoyed this article, you my also like to read:

A nudge in the right direction? Using behavioural insights in health

Heating Clydebank via the Clyde: renewable heat in the COP26 host city

Ugly veg: supermarkets aren’t the biggest food wasters – you are

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Image via The Conversation, Amophoto_au/Shutterstock

This guest blog was written by Miriam C. Dobson, NPhD Researcher in Urban Agriculture, University of Sheffield and Jill L. Edmondson, EPSRC Living with Environmental Change Research Fellow, University of Sheffield.

“Ugly” or “wonky” veg were blamed for up to 40% of wasted fruit and vegetables in 2013, as produce was discarded for failing to meet retailer appearance standards. About 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted worldwide every year and, of this, fruit and vegetables have the highest wastage rates of any food type. But just how much of that is due to “ugly veg” being tossed by farms and supermarkets? The biggest culprit for food waste may be closer to home than we’d like to admit.

“Ugliness” is just one reason among many for why food is wasted at some point from farm to fork – there’s also overproduction, improper storage and disease. But the problem of “wonky veg” caught the public’s attention.

A report published in 2017 suggested that sales of “wonky veg” have risen in recent years as retailers have acknowledged the problem with wasting edible food, but it’s estimated that up to 25% of apples, 20% of onions and 13% of potatoes grown in the UK are still wasted on cosmetic grounds.

Morrisons reported that consumers had begun to buy more misshapen food, whereas Sainsbury’s and Tesco both report including “wonky veg” in their recipe boxes, juices, smoothies and soups.

Not all ugly veg is wasted at the retail point of the supply chain however. WRAP, a charity who have been working with governments on food waste since 2000, have investigated food waste on farms and their initial findings suggest a major cause of fruit waste is due to produce failing aesthetic standards. For example, strawberries are often discarded if they’re the wrong size for supermarkets.

The National Farmers Union also reported in 2014 that around 20% of Gala apples were being wasted prior to leaving the farm gate as they weren’t at least 50% red in colour.

Home is where the waste is

Attitudes seem to be changing on “ugly veg” at least. Morissons ran a campaign to promote its “ugly veg” produce aisle, and other supermarkets are stocking similar items. Despite this, household waste Love Food Hate Waste for food waste in the UK. Just under 5m tonnes of food wasted in the UK occurs in households – a staggering 70% of all post-farm gate food waste.

A further million tonnes is wasted in the hospitality sector, with the latest government report blaming overly generous portion sizes. This suggests that perhaps – despite the best effort of campaigns such as Love Food Hate Waste – farms and retailers have been unfairly targeted by the “wonky veg” campaigns at the expense of focusing on where food waste really hits home. The 2013 Global Food Security Report put the figure for household and hospitality waste at 50% of total UK food waste.

There are some signs we’re getting better at least. WRAP’s 2015 research showed that, at the household level, people now waste 1m tonnes of food per year less than they did in 2007. This is a staggering £3.4 billion per year saved simply by throwing less edible produce away.

As climate change and its influence on extreme weather intensifies, reducing waste from precious food harvests will only become more important. Knowing exactly where the majority of waste occurs, rather than focusing too much on “wonky veg” in farms and supermarkets, is an important step towards making sure everyone has enough affordable and nutritious food to live on.

During the UK’s “Dig for Victory” campaign in World War II, a large proportion of the population had to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Now the majority of people live in cities and towns – typically detached from primary food production. In the UK, the MYHarvest project has started to uncover how much “own-growing” contributes to the national diet and it seems demand for land to grow-your-own is increasing.

Research in Italy and Germany found that people who grow their own food waste the least. One way to fight food waste at home then – whether for “wonky” fruit and vegetables or otherwise – may be to replace the farm-to-fork supply chain with a garden-to-plate approach.

Guest blog written by Miriam C. Dobson, NPhD Researcher in Urban Agriculture, University of Sheffield and Jill L. Edmondson, EPSRC Living with Environmental Change Research Fellow, University of Sheffield.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Growing places: community gardens are rising up the policy agenda

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In April, a study by Central Scotland Green Network (CSGN) reported a significant increase in community growing between 2010 and 2015. The results of the study found a rise of 79% in the number of sites devoted to community gardens, taking the total to 84, with land coverage rising to 29 hectares.

The increasing popularity of community gardens is also reflected elsewhere in the UK. The Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens (FCFCG) estimates that there are now around 1000 community gardens around the UK.

What are community gardens?

Community gardens are defined by Greenspace Scotland as:

“locally managed pieces of land that are developed in response to and reflect the needs of the communities in which they are based.”

They differ from allotments in that the focus is on communal, rather than individual growing space. Most community gardens concentrate on cultivation of fruit and vegetables, although they may also promote complementary elements, such as recreation, biodiversity and education.

Last year, our Idox Information Service briefing on community growing highlighted a number of these projects, including the Incredible Edible community growing project in West Yorkshire and G3 Growers in Glasgow. Further examples include the Culpeper Community Garden in Islington, north London, and the Grove Community Garden in Edinburgh. Meanwhile, in Streatham, south London, a patch of waste ground next to a health centre has been transformed into a community garden by a group of patients with long-term health conditions. The garden is now supplying enough produce to sell fruit and vegetables to patients and visitors at a nearby hospital.

Benefits of Community Gardens

A 2009 report from the FCFCG identified a range of social, economic and environmental benefits stemming from community gardens. These included:

  • social interactions and inclusion
  • healthy eating
  • natural therapy (feelings of relaxation, appreciation, happiness, achievement)
  • skills development, training and development
  • environmental awareness and activities

More recently, a 2015 report on community gardens in Glasgow indicated that participants enjoy physical and mental health benefits, make new friends and develop community empowerment.

In addition, community growth projects have a role to play in the local economy, providing stepping stones to employment and generating income through the sale of fruit and vegetables.

Community gardens: the policy challenges

As the benefits of community gardens have become more apparent, public policymakers have come to view community growing as a vehicle for delivering policy goals in sectors as diverse as health and the environment, business and planning.

In Scotland, a number of community gardens are being supported by funding from the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund, administered by Keep Scotland Beautiful. Other public funders of community gardens include the Big Lottery Fund and Scottish local authorities.

Earlier this year, research findings highlighted increasing support for community gardens from policymakers in Scotland at national and local levels, and the widening range of funding policy initiatives:

“There is no doubt that national and local government policy agendas are changing in response to the mounting evidence linking urban greenspace with a range of positive health, social, economic and environmental benefits and that increased support will be available for community gardens in Scotland in the future.”

However, the authors also identified a number of challenges facing community growing projects, including planning and legal issues, land availability, funding issues, winning the support of local communities and addressing skills shortages.

Tackling these issues, the authors argued, will need support at local and national levels, but they went on to highlight problems encountered by community gardens in Scotland when applying for grant funding:

“…because the policies relevant to community gardens span such a wide range of concerns across a variety of sectors (including health, land use, social regeneration and the environment) and because funding tends to be located within individual sectors, they often feel pressured to fit in with social policy agendas and associated grant funding criteria which are not entirely suited to their original aims or the needs of their users in order to be eligible for grant money.”

As an example of this, one of the research participants recalled a local health group meeting where the direction of their community garden was pushed from a “therapeutic mental health benefit” agenda to a “back to work” agenda in order to fit in with a recent policy change.

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Looking ahead

It’s likely that prevailing policy will continue to affect the way community growing projects organise and develop. In 2015, the Scottish Parliament approved the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act, which includes provisions giving communities the right to take over land in urban and rural areas, enabling, for example, the transformation of waste ground into community garden. And in its 2016 manifesto for the Scottish Parliament elections, the Scottish National Party pledged to work through the Community Empowerment Act to increase access to land for food growing purposes to develop allotments and community gardens.

If community gardens are to grow further, it appears that organisers will have to explore inventive ways of navigating a complex funding landscape, while satisfying the objectives of policymakers at national and local levels.

If you enjoyed this blog post, you may be interested in some of our other posts on community development:

The Govanhill Baths: a successful example of community-led regeneration

SURF Awards winners: success stories in Scottish regeneration

The potential of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill to strengthen community planning