Nourishing neighbourhoods: making community food favourites healthier

All children should have access to healthy and affordable food, but unfortunately, unhealthy food and drink options is in most cases the most affordable and easiest to access. Children in low-income areas are more likely to be presented with unhealthy options where they live, play, and go to school.

Healthier food now costs three times as much per calorie as unhealthy food. Major health impacts can be achieved with minor recipe adjustments. Investment in healthier products has historically been targeted at wealthier consumers, but to level the playing field, food available in lower income areas needs to be affordable and nutritious.

Reformulation to lower levels of sugar, salt, calories and saturated fat can improve diets as there is a lower burden on the public to consciously review and sustain changes to what they eat.

The EIT Food team is delighted to join with Impact on Urban Health, ROTA, RSSL, and Reformul8 Scotland to collaborate on a project to work with manufacturers to reformulate food and drink products tailored to local community preferences.

We will take a community-led approach, guided by the concept of community level behavioural change, identify which products families would most like to see reformulated and work with producers so that culturally appropriate food can be both healthier and more affordable for local families.

We will work with technical reformulation experts to reformulate the community-selected products to make them healthier and affordable. This process supports manufacturers to bring desired products into local markets, and helps manufacturers anticipate regulation that is increasingly targeting less healthy foods.

This project has the potential to improve access to affordable, healthy and culturally diverse food and create positive long-term health impact, aligned with EIT Food’s Mission: Healthy Lives through Food.

This project has the potential to demonstrate community demand for reformulated products, as well as feasibility of reformulation from manufacturers. The outcomes of this project can go on to provide evidence for near-future policy regulations.

We want to raise the public profile of healthier products, demonstrate the role innovation can play, and develop partnerships that support coordinated action towards improving health.

There is a strong and consistent message being shared by stakeholders committed to action on health – the need for greater collaboration and the creation of a coordinated approach to improving access to healthier food for all.

If you are interested in reformulating one of your products, or learning more, please reach out to: anna.traylor@eitfood.eu, jayne.brookman@eitfood.eu, paul.quinlan@eitfood.eu and/or anna.moskow@eitfood.eu

Impact on Urban Health is an independent urban health foundation. Working in partnership with others, it takes a place-based approach to tackling urban health issues in the London Boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark, sharing what it learns with other cities around the world. Impact on Urban Health takes a programmatic approach, focusing on a small range of big issues. Its Children's Health and Food programme aims to ensure all children and young people have equitable access to nutritious, tasty, affordable food as they grow up, no matter where they live.

A cutting-edge food and pharmaceutical research company, pushing the boundaries of science and innovation to help make our world safer, healthier and more sustainable. Their clients trust them to deliver innovative solutions to real-world problems through rigorous analytical testing, state-of-the-art research and development, product development services and customised consultancy. In everything they do, they are focused on transforming lives through science, innovation and collaboration.

Improving the health of Scotland’s products and people. Since 2019 the Reformul8 programme has worked to demonstrably improve the health of Scotland’s diet and embed the programme as the go-to voice for industry on reformulation support for Scotland. Innovative initiatives have been developed to support the food industry including a wide range of free to access webinars, podcasts, and guides, the Reformul8 partnership to drive collaboration across Scotland’s whole food system and a range of funds to support with the associated costs of reformulating. Paving the way for a healthier future though innovative industry support

FDF, Food and Drink Federation

Shaping the future of food & drink manufacturing. For over a century, the FDF has supported food and drink manufacturing in the UK by contributing to policy and legislation and championing the industry’s views on key policy areas. FDF’s skilled teams of experts work with businesses, government, regulators, and its members to create a business environment for the industry to thrive. As the UK's largest manufacturing sector, food and drink contributes over £37 billion to the nation’s economy, supporting half a million jobs making products that are loved in the UK and beyond.

ROTA’s role is to drive for structural change by using evidence and research, working collaboratively with impacted communities and the organisations that support them. They believe communities impacted by racism, and the organisations which serve them, already know how best we can create anti-racist policies and practices. ROTA works with these groups and uses its lobbying and communications expertise to enable communities to exercise their power, empowering them to wield their influence and drive change. They abide by the principal of ‘nothing about us without us’.