Eating Better

Eating Better is pleased to announce the appointment of Sarah Wakefield as its new Executive Director.

According to a study published in the British Medical Journal Nutrition, Prevention & Health, most medical professionals receive less than two hours of nutrition education during their entire training. Lauren Rathbone, registered dietitian, tells us how Best Food Forward, an initiative by The School of Artisan Food is filling this gap by offering a practical, enjoyable and unique learning environment to upskill health and medical professionals in food and health.

The Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count took place at the beginning of August. Over 92,000 people put on their walking boots and counted 1,571,619 butterflies from 21 species. Butterflies and moths are important to a healthy ecosystem and Tim Martin from Eating Better alliance member Farm Wilder shows how an abundance of butterflies can be part of beef farming in the UK.

Eating Better alliance partner TABLE’s brilliant new video with BBC Ideas tackles the myths surrounding beans, and explains how beans are unsung kitchen heroes. Jacquelyn Turner at TABLE tells us more about how the video came to life.

Our Sourcing Better Checked Out reviewed retailers’ published commitments against Eating Better’s Sourcing Better framework and found that they often lack sufficient policies and reporting to deliver on goals. Eating Better alliance member Feedback’s new report ‘Greenwash Grocers’ has revealed that greenwashing is rife across the UK supermarket sector. Liam Lysaght, campaigner at Feedback UK, tells us more about their findings.

We are excited to announce the appointment of three new trustees to the Board of Eating Better. Here we introduce Kristin Bash, Liz Gadd and Shaleen Meelu, and hear their motivation for joining the Board.

Eating Better’s newest alliance member The Woodland Trust is hosting the UK’s first Agroforestry Show in September. Helen Chesshire explores the importance of agroforestry in the transition to healthier and more sustainable food and farming in the UK.

To mark International Youth Day on the 12th of August, we spoke to landworker and FLAME coordinator Camile El-Maawiy to hear about the new and dynamic grassroots food movement orchestrated by young people.

The Climate Change Committee’s latest Progress Report to Parliament highlights how the UK is falling short on reducing domestic emissions from all sectors and failing to facilitate a shift to healthy and sustainable diets.

South Asian Heritage Month seeks to highlight the diverse heritage and cultures that continue to link the UK with South Asia. In this blog, Sareta Puri, chef at Eating Better alliance member Made in Hackney, explores the link between kitchari, colonisation and her own experience of the ancient Indian life science of Ayurveda.

Pig and poultry production in the UK is heavily dependent on imported soy from South America which has widespread impacts. Soy No More, a new report from the Landworker’s Alliance, Pasture for Life, Sustain and Hodmedods, emphasises the need to transition away from soy, and increase UK pulse production. This will only be achieved by shifting diets to less meat and more pulses.

Food is often a glue that brings together different cultures and people to build strong and supportive communities. Migrateful is a UK charity and community cooking school which supports asylum seekers, refugees and migrants on their journey to integration and independence through supporting the running of cookery classes. Halima Aro, one of the Migrateful's Nigerian chefs, shows how simple changes can be made to traditional recipes to add more plants to your plate.

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.

Reflecting on the defeat of the Food Bill in Wales, we look towards future opportunities to prioritise healthy and sustainable food

Eating Better alliance member Feedback recently attended the annual general meetings (AGMs) of two major banks to question their continued investment in industrial livestock. Feedback’s Christina O’Sullivan explains that banks need to end their support of industrial meat production.

For a decade and a half the Kindling Trust has been playing a part in reshaping farming and how our food is grown to make it more accessible to communities and reduce its impact on the planet.

Eating Better together with Healthy Food Healthy Planet hosted a panel at the international Extinction or Regeneration conference with representatives from Italy, Spain, Poland to hear experiences of civil society collaboration across Europe.

Ahead of the international Extinction or Regeneration conference, to which Eating Better was a partner, we invited representatives from 7 European countries to share and learn from each other, nurture relationships and explore successes and challenges.

Plant and Share Month has become a much-loved staple of the springtime calendar running from 22nd April to 20th May 2023. The campaign, run by Eating Better alliance member Soil Association’s Food for Life programme, grew from a desire to make growing plants and food accessible and easy to learn about, bringing together communities up and down the country to grow together. During a cost of living crisis that has seen supplies of fruit and vegetables dwindle in the supermarkets and the cost of meat and dairy rising, growing your own herbs, salads and vegetables can be a great way of eating healthily and sustainably.

Stop Food Waste Day  aims to highlight how valuable food is and how reducing waste can save money, time and the environment. The UK alone produces around 6.6 million tonnes of waste a year just at the household level, accounting for 25 million tonnes of CO2 emissions - 5.4% of the UK’s overall emissions.

We are delighted to announce that The Woodland Trust is joining the Eating Better alliance.

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?