Food for thought

Last week I attended the Food Policy Symposium at City University’s Centre for Food Policy and it was eye-opening.

Food systems and food policy are two subjects I find deliciously fascinating.

I think it’s because they feed (geddit) into almost every other area of life and society. They are intrinsically linked to climate change and sustainability challenges, for example.

My takeaways from the symposium: there’s a lot of groundbreaking work being done to tackle food inequalities. But, in the UK at least, most of this is at local level – there’s a lack of political will in Westminster to make the systemic changes that are so sorely needed.

Another takeaway: some literature I took home from the event listed some great examples of food policy initiatives from around the world.

Did you know?

·       Since 2016, Chile has required black warning labels on packaged foods high in energy, sugars, saturated fats and sodium.

·       In 2016, the French government passed a law banning supermarkets from destroying food waste and requiring them to donate it to food aid charities.

·       In 1997, Mexico established its cash transfer programme, Prospera. It provides cash to low-income women, with the requirement that they must vaccinate their children, enrol them in school, and participate in a package of health interventions and diet and nutrition education.

·       In 2007, Copenhagen City Council decided that food served in its public institutions (schools, nurseries, old people’s homes) would be 90% organic.*

All innovative and forward-thinking policies. But which country was conspicuously absent from the list? I’m sorry to report that it was the UK. An initiative by the Mayor of London was a notable exception – in 2019, the Mayor ruled that adverts for foods and drinks high in fat, salt and sugar would not be approved for display on the city’s public transport network.

Another takeaway: things are already really hard, and they aren’t going to get easier any time soon.

Rob Percival from the Soil Association’s talk was entitled: ‘Food policy fit for an age of permacrisis’. The word ‘permacrisis’ was a common thread throughout the day, a word to express the age we’re living in.

It’s woeful just how short termist our responses to these countless challenges tend to be. Every time we fail to address the deep-rooted causes of food poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity, we simply kick things into the long grass. What we need to do is balance short-term gain with long-term transformation.

But times of crisis can also be times of change. The many great initiatives happening at local and regional level, especially in UK cities, illustrate this. But we still need that systemic change from the top. We cannot simply allow the markets to decide how things play out and who gets to eat nutritious, healthy foods.

As one panellist said: how can it be right that eating healthy food is a privilege?