Eating Better

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.

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.

Changes to menu design and language can be a low cost and effective way to encourage more sustainable diets with less meat and dairy and more plants.

Eating Better has released a new “Serving Better” film to illustrate ways in which public sector catering can take steps to put more plant-based meals on menus and serve ‘less and better’ meat and dairy.

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?  

The menus at the Mexican inspired chain Wahaca, which has 13 sites across the UK, is now around 50% plant-based, while its sourcing policy focuses on “better” meat and local produce from the best of British farms

Certified by Pasture for Life, award winning, Organic dairy farm Mossgiel in Ayrshire is “working with nature, not against it.”

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 ...

The Plating Up Progress report from the Food Foundation tracks the progress of food retail and food service on setting and reporting on targets towards a healthy and sustainable food system. The dashboards can be used by policy makers, food businesses and investors.  

The FAIRR Initiative is a collaborative investor network of 250+ institutional investors with around $15tn in combined assets that has been engaging global food companies across the supply chain on a range of ESG issues since 2015.

Inspired by customer demand for healthier, more sustainable food, Food Equilibrium (Food EQ) was born out of the BaxterStorey’s Chef Academy programme, and aims to empower and inspire chefs to make plants and grains the stars of the plate. For Food EQ “fresh ingredients + well trained chefs = great food.”

Certified by Eating Better members the Soil Association and Pasture for Life, award winning Eversfield Organic in Devon is an example of a business putting the focus on “less and better” meat. 

Award winning Hodmedods is a small but growing, independent UK business founded in 2021, which has harnessed the opportunity to produce and sell more beans and pulses.