The impossible challenge: Affording healthy food for low income families with children

The Labour Party's first 100 days in power presents a pivotal opportunity to implement new policies to nourish the nation.

The worrying deterioration in children’s health in recent years, both from excess calories and insufficient nutrients, was highlighted in a report we published last month. But this trajectory is reversible if policymakers recognise their responsibility to address the problem and take bold action.

Critically, people’s ability to afford healthy food is a major determinant in the nutritional quality of their diets and a key reason for the large differences in dietary health between the most well off in the population and the least.

Therefore, policies to ensure healthy diets are more affordable are an essential cornerstone to improving the health of our children and our latest report shows it is crucially important that Labour prioritise the actions needed to address the crisis.