Share your ideas for a better food system

Our Executive Director Anna Taylor explains why we've launched Nourishing the Nation: A new vision for the food system

Many of us are working on different aspects of food system change.

You might be a researcher playing a vital role in revealing the environmental harms linked to our diets, you might be a campaigner trying to ensure that children’s exposure to junk food advertising is reduced, you might be a civil servant working on policy proposals for the post election period, you might work for a business who has set targets to increase the healthiness of its sales – but trying to work out how to achieve them, you might be an investor is who getting concerned about the risks baked into the food industry and how these can be reduced.

I bet you each have a different idea of what a better future could look like, but maybe you’ve never even aired your ideas or discussed them with your colleagues.

Nourishing the Nation: A new vision for the food system

The truth is that it’s often hard to see past our current reality because how we eat now has become normal to us – our dietary patterns have changed gradually – and not in a good direction – since the WW2 and we’re now waking up to how much they have changed and the impact it is having on our society.

But it’s not always easy to imagine what our food system could or should be like.

I was reminded of this a few years ago when a  friend of mine sent me a photo of the food on offer in motorway service station in Switzerland.

It was a beautiful display of salads and other dishes suitable for self service – laden with beautifully coloured vegetables, it looked fresh, delicious and enticing. I had never really thought about food at service stations before.

I assumed that fast food, and grab and go was basically it, and never given it a second thought until I saw an image of something different.

As another example, I was struck when reading the recent Times Health Commission about the description of school lunches in Japan. They write: "At the Kohoku primary school in Tokyo the commission watched children serve each other spiced baked fish, vegetables sprinkled with dried bonito and rice for lunch.

Healthy food should be accessible to everyone

"There were no dinner ladies doling out baked beans and turkey twizzlers; instead the pupils stirred soy sauce into the dishes and ladled out bowls of miso soup.

"Before they started eating with chop sticks at their desks, the children heard about the nutritional value of the food.

Lunchtime is “part of the education”, Yasuhiro Matsuda, the deputy head, explained.

“We want children to have an understanding of the importance of good nutrition and how to eat well and we have found that healthy school meals lead to better concentration and greater mental stability too.”

Children serving children. What a great idea.