We've turned 10! Here's what a decade in policy advocacy has taught us

To mark 10 years of The Food Foundation our Executive Director Anna Taylor reflects on the highs and lows of our advocacy work - and what's likely to come next

In the summer of 2015, I waved goodbye to the civil service and became the first employee of The Food Foundation.

I was taken with Laura Sandys’ vision – she wanted to create an organisation which would tackle the challenge of a food system which is driving poor health outcomes, particularly for people on a low income - the people who were living in her constituency in South Thanet while she was an MP.

I knew a lot about food and nutrition – I’d been working on the issues internationally for 20 years, but I wanted to learn about the food system in Britain and what was going wrong.

Anna appearing on Good Morning Britain

I embarked on a steep learning curve in more ways than one: how to set up an organisation, how to find our niche in the ecosystem of organisations driving change, how to identify the policy levers which would make the biggest difference, how to build our reputation so we had a voice people would listen to… so many things to learn and just 18 months of funding to prove we could get there.

So my first reflection is a thank you – to Laura and our founding trustees and funders for taking the leap with me. It has been such a huge privilege to be on this journey with them, and I count myself incredibly fortunate to have had this opportunity both personally and professionally.

My second reflection is that you can do a lot in 10 years, but when it comes to driving systems change, it’s very little time at all.

Much of what we do is incremental work building the case for change, marshalling the evidence, shaping the media narrative, building new relationships and broadening the base of support changing the conversation so that new decisions and action become possible.

This is hard graft, often with little tangible reward. I’m very struck by the sociologist Max Weber’s words:

"Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today" – Max Weber

Over the last 10 years I have been blessed with team members who bring both "passion and perspective" – they have put in the graft, and held out hope.

They have brought humour, anger and clarity of insight. And, of course, they have brought their huge range of talents to our tiny and mighty organisation.

From my first recruits – Robin Hinks and Alex Ward, to our 22-strong team today, I am reminded again and again that our work is only as good as our people. And our people are GOOD!!

Against a backdrop of incremental change, we have also played a significant part in enabling some big policy shifts – our 10 greatest hits in the last 10 years are listed here:

And then when big things happen, it is beyond thrilling to know you’ve played your part. Particular personal highlights for me have been:

In 2017: Seeing City Hall (the old one, near London Bridge) full to the gills with people and cameras for our first ever Veg Summit. We knew at that point we were on to something – everyone wanted to talk about good food! Our Peas Please initiative followed which galvanised action across the food system to drive up veg consumption. 

Highlights of the Peas Please campaign 

In 2018: Seeing our Eat Them to Defeat Them ad appear in the ad break after Coronation Street. Somehow we had got an ad made (massive hats off to Jo Ralling and Dan Parker), got ITV to give us £6 million of free media, and set up a new organisation Veg Power to unlock the power of advertising to get kids eating veg. All on a shoestring.

An Eat Them to Defeat Them stunt in Brixton

In 2019: Witnessing the young Food Ambassadors we work with give evidence to MPs as part of our Children's Future Food Inquiry, and seeing the MP’s tears roll. A deeply moving moment, when I grasped the power of our citizen ambassadors. And then having the privilege of walking with them to No10 to deliver our Inquiry, led by the wonderful Dame Emma Thompson (known as Nanny McPhee by the Food Ambassadors!).

The Children's Future Food Inquiry

In 2020: Watching the petition ticker on the parliament website racing up – over about five days going from zero to a MILLION people supporting Marcus Rashford’s petition to provide holiday meals for children eligible for Free School Meals in term time. We worked hand in glove with Rashford for his campaign and it led to the government committing to a £220 million programme each year to fund the Holiday Activities and Food Programme. Our partnership with Rashford came as a result of our gathering and publishing data on food insecurity during the pandemic, which he cited in his first letter to MPs. We were creating the conditions for change and we were ready when Marcus stepped forward.

Marcus Rashford's petition got more than a million signatures

In 2021: Seeing our young people take the stage at the Youth4Food Festival at Valley Fest – you must watch this - it's so inspiring!

Youth4Food at Valley Fest

In 2025: Sitting in a Ministerial meeting in DEFRA while my phone buzzed with messages that No 10 was about to announce an expansion of Free School Meals to all children on Universal Credit. Bursting with excitement while trying to remain composed and not appear distracted. The most fabulous 10th birthday present.

🥳 Great news that #FreeSchoolMeals are being extended to all families in England receiving Universal Credit!

Around 500,000 children will benefit - we'd love @GOVUK to consider auto-enrolment as part of the roll out.

Read more: https://t.co/VYQHL7Hwbi#CostOfLivingCrisis… pic.twitter.com/6ARi5AuwNJ

— The Food Foundation (@Food_Foundation) June 5, 2025

So what does the next decade have in store? 

I’m hopeful that change will start to happen more quickly – why? Because some of the key enabling arguments have been won. But there’s still a huge amount to do to secure the political leadership which is needed and there’s no doubt that industry lobbying against will continue to mount.

I’m excited to play our part in helping to shape the ecosystem for change – here I mean continuing the work we’ve started in organising ourselves even better across civil society so that we can be clearer about who is doing what, and where our unique contributions lie. Acting in concert is key.

And I really hope we can land some primary legislation which provides the basis for coherent policy making in the coming decade – laying on a solid foundation for multi-decade change, and setting a clear destination, a north star, to marshal action right across society.

The stakes are high as the human and environmental costs of inaction mount by the day. We need to align action across citizens, civil society and philanthropy, and make this a cross party priority. It feels achievable – we have had a huge boost from the recent policy announcements, and we have some real momentum.