Food: a recipe for a healthy, sustainable and successful future

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2. Promoting demand for a healthy low impact diet A concerted effort is needed to foster consumer buy-in and promote demand-led change towards healthy, low impact diets A core component of the Council’s vision for the future of food is to encourage people’s desire to eat a safe, healthy diet produced from a healthy environment, thereby creating a viable food system for people and the planet. As set out in our first report, defining a healthy, low impact diet is fundamental to progress on many areas, from public procurement to determining future priorities for the food supply chain. A process for producing this advice has been agreed and integrated advice from government is scheduled to be delivered in 2011 2 . However, this is just the starting point. People need to have the means and the motivation to act on this advice. Food 2030 states that the Government will act to enable and encourage people to eat a healthy diet. People should be able to make informed choices about the food that they eat. Consumer demand is also a key driver for action to improve sustainability across the supply chain. We need to look at how best to provide advice, to motivate and enable people to change their diets. The evidence base about the case for change is increasing 3 and there have also been relevant campaigns, e.g. 10:10, Eat Seasonably and 5 A DAY 4 . Yet there is much more to do, not least on skills and awareness. Government has a role in setting the framework within which this change takes place, providing resources and engaging a broad range of stakeholders. Government can also deploy a wide range of policy levers to catalyse and accelerate progress. However, government is not always the most effective facilitator or messenger. The UK food industry needs to be part of the process of framing and debating the wider questions and developing solutions. This transition must be managed in such a way that the negative impacts associated with food production are not simply exported (and potentially increased) and the economic benefits provided by the sector lost. There are some challenging issues to be addressed, some uncertainties and contested evidence. These need to be worked through in a positive climate that is helpful to consumers and to making progress on tackling core problems. Government should develop a behaviour change action plan that recognises the structural determinants of consumer demand on an individual and collective level. It should set out explicitly how the full range of policy levers available to it will be used to effect behavioural change towards a healthy, low impact diet. These levers may include information, education, price, procurement, and working with the industry on areas such as product labelling. It should recognise the powerful role that third sector organisations can play in this process. 2 The Food Standards Agency, in partnership with other Government Departments, is developing integrated food advice and information for consumers, which will be delivered via an enhanced version of its eatwell website, scheduled for launch in spring 2011. 3 e.g. the review prepared for the Foresight Project on Global Food and Farming Futures, at www.foresight.gov.uk/OurWork/ActiveProjects/FoodandFarmingFutures/FoodandfarmingProjectHome.asp, and Defra, Food Synthesis Review, published January 2010 and available at http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Document.aspx?Document=EV0510_8635_EXE.pdf 4 www.1010uk.org; www.eatseasonably.co.uk; www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/5ADAYhome.aspx 6
2. Promoting demand for a healthy low impact diet The Council further recommends that three core streams of work to achieve a demand-led transition are taken forward. These should focus on: • Promoting a new, challenging but achievable 5 year target for fruit and vegetable consumption from sustainable sources; • understanding what steps can be taken to reshape meat and dairy supply chains to minimise the impact on greenhouse gas emissions of consumption of those products; and • set targets to shift fish consumption towards products only from sustainably managed stocks certified under Marine Stewardship Council or equivalent standards and eliminate consumption of threatened and endangered species. These three work streams should focus on developing broad principles for action, based on the current evidence base. They should also consider the roles of government, industry and other participants in the change process. The Government could make much more effective use of that part of the food system where it can directly influence the choices on offer – public sector catering and the hundreds of millions of meals it provides each year in England. Voluntary approaches to raising public sector catering standards have failed to deliver systemic change. It is time for the Government to make good on the goal set out in the Cabinet Office’s Food Matters 5 report by introducing mandatory standards covering health, environmental impact and animal welfare for the procurement and provision of public sector catering in England. A transformation in public sector catering could play a significant role in encouraging a shift towards healthy, low impact diets. Upgrading public sector catering in this way would: • give effect to the principles that government set out in Food 2030; • provide equality of access to better food across the public sector for patients, employees and others; • make a direct contribution to reducing the negative health and environmental effects that are of concern; and • provide a substantial lead market for innovative producers and suppliers. There is great potential for better procurement to deliver better food. Studies have highlighted the efficiencies on offer from smarter food procurement 6 . For example, it has been estimated that there are 35,000 different buying requisition points in public food procurement 7 , adding complexity and reducing the opportunities to leverage economies of scale. A graduated approach that starts with a common minimum standard but allows organisations to aim higher over time provides a means of raising average performance without the short term transition being too uncomfortable or costly. There is ample evidence now to inform such a scheme. Lessons need to be learnt from the introduction of school meal standards 8 , the pilots of the Healthier Food Mark and other initiatives in England, elsewhere in the UK and further afield. 5 Food Matters, Strategy Unit, Cabinet Office, 2008. www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/work_areas/food_policy.aspx 6 The Smarter food procurement in the public sector report by the National Audit Office in 2006 estimated potential savings of up to £224 million per year by 2010-11 could be achieved by changes in procurement practice and systems. 7 First Report of the Council of Food Policy Advisors, Defra, September 2009. 8 A survey of meals in primary schools, published in February 2010 by the School Food Trust, reported shifts towards healthier eating compared to a similar survey in 2005, see www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk/UploadDocs/Library/Documents/sft_primary_school_food_survey_2009.pdf 7
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Page 3 and 4: Contents Introduction 2 1 Prioritie
Page 5 and 6: 1. Priorities for food policy now F
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Page 15 and 16: 5. Securing the UK’s food product
Page 17 and 18: 6. Food R&D Food Research and Devel
Page 19 and 20: 7. How is our land to be best used?
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Page 25 and 26: 9. Supporting the developing world
Page 27 and 28: 10. Better coordination for greater
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