Last week’s Food Strategy for England landed without front-page headlines or bold pledges. Some will say it didn’t amount to much. The accompanying documents outlined the government’s vision for the UK food system, expressed as 10 goals in four areas: healthier and more affordable food; good growth; sustainable and resilient supply; vibrant food cultures.
Up to now, this government’s work on food has been a curate’s egg: good in parts. Farmers have been incensed by the changes to Inheritance Tax, while the last-minute delay to the junk food advertising ban upset both the health campaigners and businesses who had planned for it. But there have been positive steps too: extending free school meals to all families on Universal Credit, introducing mandatory reporting for large food businesses, ring-fencing most of the Environmental Land Management scheme’s budget, and giving councils the power to block new fast food outlets near schools.
Each of these will make a difference, but the piecemeal announcements reduce the overall impact. This new Food Strategy suggests a broader, more coherent ambition: to fix the system itself. By connecting the pieces, it provides Whitehall’s clearest statement of intent on food since the war.
Fixing the food system
If, as promised, this long-sighted strategy provides a “stable, transparent policy environment”, it will give food and agriculture businesses the predictability they desperately need. There has been too much chopping and changing. We need a plan that government sticks to.
Of course, intent alone is not enough: we need to see the policies that will turn this vision into reality. Wrangling any food-related policy through the government machine is tough. Already, there are signs of internal scuffles. The Grocer reported that a earlier drafts included plans for a white paper, which would have put the strategy on a statutory footing. Someone, somewhere, appears to have killed it off – for now.
The coming months will be full of such internal tugs of war. Can Steve Reed successfully negotiate the planning liberalisations required to allow farmers to increase national production or diversify their businesses in our national parks? Can Reed and Wes Streeting convince the Treasury that tackling diet-related ill health will be a boost for productivity, not a drag on it? I imagine it won’t be until next year that we find the answers to these questions and others.
Businesses across the food sector will each face varying degrees of threat and opportunity from government intervention (at the same time as the impact of appetite-suppressing drugs on the system becomes increasingly apparent). They will need to make thoughtful decisions to stay competitive – whether by changing their product ranges, improving recipes, speeding up innovation or refreshing their brand image.
Eat for Life
The new vision draws heavily on the independent review I carried out for the previous government, the National Food Strategy. But there’s one new idea I hope they will consider in the next phase. It’s the brainchild of Justin King, former Sainsbury’s chief executive and a valued member of my advisory panel.
Diet is not like smoking, where success is measured simply by how many people stop. Everyone needs to eat. So we must promote good food as well as curbing the bad.
This country has extremely low levels of vegetable and dietary fibre intake. Boosting our national consumption of fresh fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, nuts, seeds and legumes would not just reduce obesity levels, but also heart disease, diabetes, many cancers, diseases of inflammation, immune disorders and even aspects of mental health.
King suggested taking a modest, mandatory share of HFSS advertising spend and using it to fund a huge campaign for good food. Let’s call it Eat for Life. The brief would go to the country’s sharpest ad agencies: make the healthy choice desirable. It has been proven possible in this country by the Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign.
Eat for Life would not stop at billboards and television. Front-of-pack fibre stamps, loyalty point nudges and digital promotions would reinforce the message from basket to plate. Let’s use the very mechanisms that got us into the junk food cycle to get out of it. Denmark’s Whole Grain Partnership shows it can be done at a national scale.
Regulation sets the floor; culture raises the ceiling. The current plan lays a solid floor. Give it prime-ministerial muscle and add Eat for Life, and we might just get a virtuous circle that rewards farmers, food businesses and, above all, the public.
Henry Dimbleby, managing partner of Bramble Partners
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