The recent House of Lords report on Food, Diet and Obesity Committee report describes obesity and its consequences as “ a public health emergency that represents a ticking time bomb for the nation’s health, wellbeing and finances. This emergency is primarily driven by over-consumption of unhealthy foods.”
This is not down to a collective loss of willpower, but to our broken food system. Unhealthy food is cheaper and more available than healthy food and is heavily advertised to increase food companies’ profits. The statistics show a huge shift in our diets, rates of obesity and impacts on health:
· 50% of the calories eaten by adults in the UK are from Ultra Processed Food, rising to 65% for adolescents.
· Two-thirds of adults are living with overweight or obesity, and 29% are living with obesity. More than 20% of children start primary school with overweight or obesity, rising to 36.6% by the time they leave.
· Excess weight increases the risk of developing colon cancer, heart disease and diabetes and can harm self-esteem.
In Shropshire, the Healthier Weight Strategy identifies diet, physical activity and food poverty as key drivers of excess weight and its health impacts. Almost 2/3 of adults and 1/2 children aren’t eating enough fruit and veg, whilst 14% are struggling with food poverty and 55% of people feel ‘priced out’ of buying healthy food. The strategy also makes clear that that healthy weight is a complex, emotionally loaded issue.
To defuse this problem is going to take government leadership, legislation to curb the sale of unhealthy food, work to tackle food poverty and a major shift in our food culture. The government have announced that they will develop a new National Food Strategy in 2025, which may help, but we can’t simply wait for the government to get to grips with this issue.
So where to start?
Thanks to the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, we’ve been having Food Conversations with people across the county to find out what is important in making this change. Our survey of the views of 113 young people showed that 60% of them thought it was hard to eat a healthy diet. They put this down to opportunities to eat unhealthy food (50%) and the high cost of healthy food (36%).
They explained:
“When you go into a shop, the first thing you see is fizzy drinks. It’s hard to hit a healthy diet, it’s harder nowadays. You get addicted to sugar, it’s like a drug, isn’t it?”
“Regular corner shops, shops on housing estates don’t sell fruit, veg or healthy snacks.”
We think empowering young people to have their say on this vital issue is the place to start. And then supporting their communities to respond to the challenge. We already have a lot to build on. The work of our community partners like OsNosh, Fordhall Farm, Shropshire Youth Association and Shrewsbury Food Hub are proving the positive impact community growing and cooking projects have on food culture and developing innovative ways of working with young people. Shaping Places showed how effective collaboration is in finding community-based solutions.
We’re bidding for resources to run pilots across our schools and communities so we can learn how to make it easy for everyone to eat a healthy diet. These collaborative projects will bring together our local community, schools, the council and NHS with the best of ideas across the UK.
If you’d like to find out more or get involved please contact katy@shropshiregoodfood.org
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