Eating Better

At Eating Better, we are reflecting on what food justice looks like to us. We are starting to critically examine the role we play in transformation towards sustainable, healthy, just food systems. 

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.

It’s World Pulse Day next month, which is why in the lead up to it I am supporting Eating Better’s, Anything Is 'Pulse-able’ campaign which highlights the power of pulses. It’s World Pulses Day and, “so what?” many might say. It seems that every day brings another ‘something day’, many with associated marketing and sales spin. I suspect consumers may be becoming immune and fatigued by these special ‘days’, and I can empathise strongly with that stance. All that said, please believe me when I say, World Pulses Day is different. The first indicator of this should be when you ask yourself, and you should: who established World Pulses Day, and why?

Bread n Butter is a Barnet-based social enterprise that teaches the basic life skills of cooking and sustainable, healthy, independent living. We spoke to them about how the cost of living crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have changed their approach to working in their community and the positive impact that healthy eating can have.

Eating Better alliance member First Steps Nutrition Trust shows how pulses are great first foods for infants from 6 months.

New campaign from Eating Better aims to show how eating pulses can save you money and improve your health

Eating Better alliance member Sustain publishes new report on how UK councils are tackling the climate and nature emergency through food.

Ecologist and author, Carl Safina; scholar and activist, Dr Vandana Shiva; Director at the Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London, Professor Corinna Hawkes; writer, activist and academic, Professor Raj Patel; and UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Olivier De Schutter, among top speakers announced.

How Hubbub used football as a hook to inspire fans to eat less meat  

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.

Ensuring everyone has access to a healthy diet that doesn’t cost the earth is a critical priority. The Food Strategy falls desperately short on effective, evidence-based measures to achieve this.

Eating Better regularly conducts public attitude surveys to take the temperature of where people are on the journey to shifting to sustainable diets with less meat and dairy and more plant-based foods. We examine what the trends are and what the barriers are to change. This year’s analysis also took a deep dive into food-to-go to find out what’s happening in that sector and if sandwiches, a British staple, are still popular.

As the UK’s civil society was coming to terms with the lack of ambition of its government’s National Food Strategy, which according to the Committee for Climate Change “will do precious little to tackle emissions from agriculture which is now one of the most serious contributors to climate change”, alliance member Changing Markets launched a new study looking at how much different measures can contribute to methane reductions in agriculture. The study confirms that policies promoting healthier diets could lead to the biggest methane cuts in the EU. Blog for Eating Better by Nusa Urbancic, Campaigns Director at the Changing Markets Foundation

The government has published its first food strategy in 75 years, in response to the independent review by its lead food adviser, Henry Dimbleby. Although the government has accepted some of the review’s recommendations, there is still a lot missing from the document, in particular the lack of acknowledgement on the need to reduce meat production and consumption to tackle the climate, nature and health crises.

The Nature Friendly Farming Network’s (NFFN) first annual Nature Friendly Farming Week (16-20 May) celebrated nature-friendly farming for five full days, where nature-friendly farmers took part in daily themes to share their experiences online using the daily hashtags.

At the start of the panel discussion on plant-based catering in the public sector, a poll of the 150+ attendees found that 69% think there is still a need to broaden the understanding amongst caterers as to the health and wider benefits of plant-based eating

Eating Better’s newest member is Kids Kitchen, a social enterprise building health and community from running scratch cooking sessions, to help families with under 5s explore and enjoy sustainable eating.

Momentum is building behind meat reduction across the public sector and support for the PSC100 initiative, launched two years ago, to reduce meat and dairy consumption by 20%. More and more chefs are being trained to develop exciting plant-based dishes for the public sector and to adapt dishes with “less and better” meat. 

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

To tackle climate change we urgently need to transition away from industrial livestock production  

The youth-led food campaigning charity, Bite Back has joined Eating Better. Founded by Jamie Oliver, the charity puts young people at the heart of changing our food systems.

How many people know that even if we ended fossil fuel use tomorrow, without making significant changes to our global food system, we would still be heading towards catastrophic levels of warming, far beyond 1.5 degrees?  

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 ...

Plant-based cookery school, Made in Hackney has joined Eating Better, bringing a wealth of experience and expertise of community-led, scratch cooking, using local, seasonal and sustainable fruit and veg.