Eating Better

For the first time food, farming, land, and nature are due to take the spotlight during the UNFCCC COP, this year hosted from 30th November - 12th December in Dubai. While previous COPs have given a nod to our food systems, little has been produced in the way of agreements or commitments on healthy and sustainable food. This year's event however promises action. As COP28 kicks off, we take a look at what’s planned for food and farming and highlight which events to attend to get the dish on less and better meat and dairy.

Christmas is a time of celebration and indulgence, but plants can often be sidelined. We spoke to Annabelle Randles (known as The Flexitarian online) about her experience growing up in France and how she centres plants on her festive table.

With global events understandably taking over the news, you would be forgiven for not being completely up to date with where each of the UK’s political parties stand on food systems. We took a look at the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative recent party conferences to assess the priorities.

Georgie Branch, Healthy Zones Programme Manager at Eating Better alliance member School Food Matters, explains how schools working with the charity have embraced less and better meat, and how government school food standards need to be improved.

‘It’s time to act on processed meat’ explores the health impacts of processed meat and calls on health organisations and public sector caterers to reduce the amount of processed meat on menus. Dr Shireen Kassam, Consultant Haematologist and Director of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK sets out the need for hospitals to stop serving processed meat.

September is PCOS Awareness Month. Rohini Bajekal brings together her personal and professional experiences, as a nutritionist, cookery teacher at Eating Better alliance member Made in Hackney, and co-author of Living PCOS Free: How to Regain Your Hormonal Health with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, to tell us about how replacing processed meat with whole food sources of plant protein can affect Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).

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.

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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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

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.

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.