Eating Better

We are excited to release the updated Better by Half Roadmap, Eating Better’s guide for achieving nutritious, healthy and sustainable diets across the UK, with a focus on less and better meat and dairy. This revision builds on its creation in 2019. It is a reflection of our shared objectives as an alliance, formed through collaboration between our 68 member organisations.

Eating Better’s Better by Half roadmap calls for producers to maximise UK-based plant production in a sustainable way. Key to this is paying growers fairly and embedding accessibility across the business. We spoke to Sean Ruffell, Managing Director of Organic North in Manchester, about how they are supporting farmers and supplying organic produce to businesses across the UK.

Our recent report ‘It’s time to act on processed meat’ highlights the need to reduce processed meat for our health and the planet. Processed meat intake in infants and children is particularly concerning due to the high level of salt. We spoke to Eating Better alliance member First Steps Nutrition Trust about processed meat and young children’s health.

A new resource from Eating Better considers the health impacts of processed meat and highlights the need for public sector caterers and health organisations to focus efforts on reducing processed meat consumption in the UK.

Our report ‘Sourcing Better Checked Out’ found a lack of effective sourcing policies to support local soil health on farms. We found no publicly available reporting on specific soil health indicators, or policies to limit insecticidal veterinary medication use that is harmful to soil health.

Our recent report ‘Sourcing Better Checked Out’ found a lack of effective sourcing policies to support local biodiversity in farmed landscapes. While many retailers had topline statements of ambition, there is almost no reporting on biodiversity actions or indicators throughout their meat and dairy supply chains.

Maddy Haughton- Boakes, Campaigns Advisor at the Changing Markets Foundation introduces their new report ‘Feeding us Greenwash’, which lifts the green veil and highlights the extent of greenwashing by food companies and how consumers respond to these environmental claims.

A new report reviews retailers’ published commitments against Eating Better’s Sourcing Better framework.

‘Producing, Buying and Serving Better’ is the latest film by Eating Better, highlighting the exemplary work taking place in Scotland. This is an inspirational story that can help other local authorities, producers and retailers see the potential of local food systems.

Food service and food retail greatly influence how we shop and what we eat and holding them to account is key to shifting the dial to get us all eating better. Using the sandwich sector as a proxy, Eating Better tracked and benchmarked retailer commitment to sustainable eating by examining changes in their sandwich offer. Our new report “Sandwiches Unwrapped 2022” looks at changes in vegetarian and plant-based sandwich ranges against meat-based ones.

Food service and food retail greatly influence how we shop and what we eat and holding them to account is key to shifting the dial to get us all eating better. Eating Better’s new report “Sandwiches Unwrapped 2022” looks at changes in vegetarian and plant-based sandwich ranges against meat-based ones, using the sandwich sector as a proxy to track and benchmark retailer commitment to sustainable eating. The analysis shows the sandwich aisle is still too meaty and plant-based too pricey.

A new campaign from the Soil Association exposes the use of highly hazardous pesticides in supermarket soy supply chains for chicken feed.

A new report, released today on World Health Day, by World Animal Protection and Tasting the Future, has laid bare the most damaging human health impacts linked to factory farming, and how these will only get worse as the demand for cheap meat continues to grow ...

Waitrose’s farming commitments demonstrate its leadership in farm animal welfare and deliver “better.” It holds 14 Retailer Awards from Compassion in World Farming, including five Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards. Waitrose is ranked as tier one leaders by Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare.

Sainsbury’s has taken the first steps toward embedding a sustainable diets strategy across the business. The food retailer’s ‘Helping Everyone Eat Better’ brand commitment is focused on supporting healthier and more sustainable diets through a number of strategies.

Initially developed with Tesco, WWF is now working with five UK supermarkets to halve the environmental impact of UK baskets by 2030, using the WWF Basket metric to track progress.   

The Co-op is encouraging its customers to reduce meat consumption and eat more plants by pricing plant-based foods competitively against meat products. The retailer is doing this as part of its Climate Plan and Count Us In programme.

Eating Better’s public attitudes survey found almost three-quarters of the UK public would like to do more to support farmers that have high animal welfare and environmental standards.

Agriculture is a huge contributor to the climate and nature crises. According to WWF UK, 30% of human-made greenhouse gas emissions are caused by food production and 60% of global nature loss is caused by the food system.

As Campaign Manager at the Alliance to Save our Antibiotics, I’ve been assessing UK supermarket’s antibiotics policies since 2017. Over this time I have seen a shift toward more robust antibiotic policies.

Our latest ready meals snapshot reveals that plant-based meals are the fastest growing category, up by 92% since our first survey in 2018.

Eating Better member organisation Feedback has just published their Meat and Climate Supermarket Scorecard for 2021, ranking the top ten UK retailers on their work to address the climate crisis by reducing the environmental impact of the meat and dairy they sell.

The Veg Facts 2021 report from Peas Please continues to show both adults and children are not consuming enough veg to meet the Government’s Eatwell Guide recommendations, with 29% of 5-10 year olds eating less than a portion of veg a day.

As we emerge from the pandemic, it’s time to hit reset - we can’t go back to business-as-usual. We need to take action to fix the climate and nature emergency, but we can’t do this without tackling food.