Currently, the food system is contributing to ill health in the short term,: appearing as poor mental health, poor gut health, dental disease, overweight and obesity, and in the long term contributing to diabetes type 2, cancers and fatty liver disease.
Many people in the UK are food insecure, meaning that they do not always have enough to eat most days of the week. Food prices are rising which puts pressure on the weekly shop which is the most elastic of household budgets and often the first to be squeezed.
Our farmers and growers are facing challenges from the high costs of inputs (fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides), and high costs of fuel and wages. These difficulties are combined with unreliable weather affecting yields and competition from cheaper food produced outside the UK.
It is possible to change to the way food is grown, bought/sold, prepared, eaten and disposed of but there are forces that push against the changes that are powerful and have lots of money backing them. This corporate concentration, fuelled by expensive advertising campaigns, makes it really difficult to eat healthy foods that are grown locally, or produced in ways that support nature and ensure future soil fertility.
I meet people where they are, working with communities, organisations and businesses to push back against food-related ill health and environmental degradation and support folk to enjoy better, tastier lives as a result.