When healthy produce, such as fruit and veg, is more than twice as expensive as unhealthy foods, then we know the nation’s diet is in trouble. If this is not worrying enough, research by the Food Foundation shows that the poorest fifth of the population now need to allocate 45 per cent of their disposable income to afford a healthy diet. This rises to 70 per cent for those with children.
The annual Broken Plate report, recently published by the food charity, is grim reading. The gap between unhealthy and healthy options has widened dramatically over the past two years, with prices for nutritious foods, such as vegetables rising by 21 per cent, while less healthy options only increasing by 11 per cent. Access to the basics for families to afford a nutritious diet is becoming harder.
It is no wonder that the two-thirds of British adults are overweight and just under a third are living with obesity, and that’s in the government’s own words. “There has been an utter failure to tackle this crisis,” said a House of Lords report in October last year.
When a basket of healthy options including vegetables costs £8.80 on average for a thousand calories and only £4.30 for less healthy products – think ready meals and processed food – it is no wonder that food insecure families have reduced their vegetable intake by 44 per cent and their fruit purchases by 60 per cent, according to the Food Foundation report.
Rising costs are hitting families and fresh produce purchases are taking the hit.
“People just don’t have enough money in their pockets when they go to the shops to be able to afford food items that are healthy. When people are paying so much on their rent or mortgage every month then they don’t have very much left over to spend on food,” explains Joss MacDonald, Public Affairs Lead at the Food Foundation.
He adds: “One thing we’re calling for is for the price of a healthy diet to be taken into consideration when setting levels for the national living wage or universal credit. We also need a specific fruit and veg strategy.”
In its recent Broken Plate report the Food Foundation says that we need to ensure that “everyone has sufficient income to afford to eat a healthy and sustainable diet.” This is a tall order given the current state of affairs.
It doesn’t help that housing absorbs a larger proportion of consumption in the UK than in any other OECD nation except Finland, according to the Resolution Foundation. Even though the UK has some of the cheapest food prices in the developed world, these are not offset by the sky-high cost of housing.
When affordability of healthy fruit and veg is so low, supermarkets are directing consumers to what they can afford and that is more unhealthy products, which are cheaper.
Over a third (37%) of supermarket promotions on food and non-alcoholic beverages are now focused on unhealthy items, while a similar proportion (36%) of advertising expenditure is aimed at this category including snacks, confectionery, beverages and deserts.
Advertising spend on fruit and vegetables is a mere 2 per cent; an advert for carrots or kale, a rarity compared to the deluge of ads for unhealthy products. The Food Foundation are rightly calling for restrictions on these type of promotions.
“We’re not saying get rid of food advertising. We would just like the food advertising that does exist to be more focused on healthy food. There’s also a great opportunity to promote locally produced food. It could be an amazing way to support British growers and farmers by boosting the advertising of their produce as well,” details MacDonald.
He cited Veg Power, a not-for-profit alliance behind the advertising campaign ‘Eat Them To Defeat Them’ aimed at improving children’s vegetable eating habits. Now in its six year this successful project has touched the lives of 1.7 million children and 5,000 schools, coupled with £20 million in advertising spend.
The government is now planning to address some of these issues with a new national food strategy in the first half of this year. Details are scant at this stage, but one focus will be to provide better access to healthier food.
“We need primary legislation. There can’t just be more voluntary incentives for food producers because they have been shown not to work. We need things to be mandatory, and the public supports that; expanding the sugary drinks levy to food would be a start. This was a really successful policy of the last Conservative government,” details the Food Foundation’s public affairs lead.
“Any money raised has to then be reinvested directly back into the food system. Certainly, there isn’t that much scope for fruit and vegetables to be cheaper. As we all know, farmers aren’t making a big profit, the problem is affordability.”
As MacDonald also points out, many drinks companies that were hit with the sugar tax then reformulated their products with artificial or natural sweeteners (which brings another battery of potential health issues into the mix) to avoid penalties. The same is likely to happen if the tax is extended to food producers and their unhealthy sugar laden products – meaning there’ll be less raised and reinvested.
A strong idea to help reset the balance could be local food hubs, suggest Macdonald. ‘It’s a growing area which is really exciting and we’re hearing from the UK government that they’re increasingly interested in these. There are many models that exist right now. It’s not clear which model should be scaled or how these could be scaled up, or which model works best, but what we do know is that we need to boost British grown fruit and veg and not rely on imports in a climate disruptive future.”
According to the Eatwell guidelines, the amount of fruit and veg we eat should make up just over a third of our diet. However, Britain does not produce or import enough fruit and vegetables for its population to get the government-recommended five portions a day (or minimum of 400g) intake.
Farmers are increasingly realising that the best way to make a decent living could be via direct-to-consumer sales, as companies such as Riverford has done for many years. Local food hubs could be part of that solution.
There is already a Local Food Plan supported by a number of organisations. The aim is to make healthy, locally grown food accessible, affordable, sustainable, with shortened supply chains and diversify retail — since 95 per cent of the food consumed in the UK is sold by just 12 retailers.
Certainly, change cannot come quick enough for the millions of UK households that are still not able to afford healthy fruit and veg.
You can read the Food Foundation’s Broken Plate report, here.
Community supported agriculture schemes are a brilliant type of local food hub that provide fresh local produce direct to consumers, connect them with the land where their food comes from, are affordable and accessible, encourage people to take part, and practise sustainable and regenerative farming methods.
There are around 200 across the UK and the number is increasing all the time. More details at communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk