Eating Better

With global events understandably taking over the news, you would be forgiven for not being completely up to date with where each of the UK’s political parties stand on food systems. We took a look at the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative recent party conferences to assess the priorities.

As part of our ‘Season to taste’ campaign, we invited Jenny Lau, writer and community organiser, to talk about her regular potluck event at Hackney Chinese Community Services and the celebration of culture and food that it represents.

Diwali or Deepavali is one of the most widely celebrated festivals in India and for the Indian diaspora around the world. We invited chef Sareta Puri to prepare some of her favourite festive dishes with a plant-based twist.

We invited Alissa Timoshkina, a cookery teacher, food writer and co-founder of the #CookForUKRAINE campaign to take us through the rich food traditions of Eastern Europe along with a recipe for a delicious plant-based dumpling soup.

India's rich and diverse cultural tapestry is intricately woven with flavours and aromas that captivate the senses. Among the many treasures in Indian cuisine, one beverage stands out for its widespread popularity and deep-rooted cultural significance: masala chai. In this blog, we have invited Amala Chai to delve into the enchanting world of masala chai and explore its profound connection to Indian culture.

To kick off our 'Season to taste' campaign we invited chef Tomi Makanjuola, better known as The Vegan Nigerian, to share one of her favourite nostalgic holiday dishes with us. Jollof is a staple rice dish that is culturally significant to many countries across West Africa. It is a versatile and heartwarming dish that brings communities together.

The holidays is a cheerful time of gathering for friends, family and communities, it is a time where people come together and share traditions, songs, ceremonies and most importantly food!

Georgie Branch, Healthy Zones Programme Manager at Eating Better alliance member School Food Matters, explains how schools working with the charity have embraced less and better meat, and how government school food standards need to be improved.

‘It’s time to act on processed meat’ explores the health impacts of processed meat and calls on health organisations and public sector caterers to reduce the amount of processed meat on menus. Dr Shireen Kassam, Consultant Haematologist and Director of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK sets out the need for hospitals to stop serving processed meat.

September is PCOS Awareness Month. Rohini Bajekal brings together her personal and professional experiences, as a nutritionist, cookery teacher at Eating Better alliance member Made in Hackney, and co-author of Living PCOS Free: How to Regain Your Hormonal Health with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, to tell us about how replacing processed meat with whole food sources of plant protein can affect Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).

Our recent report ‘It’s time to act on processed meat’ highlights the need to reduce processed meat for our health and the planet. Processed meat intake in infants and children is particularly concerning due to the high level of salt. We spoke to Eating Better alliance member First Steps Nutrition Trust about processed meat and young children’s health.

Eating Better is pleased to announce the appointment of Sarah Wakefield as its new Executive Director.

According to a study published in the British Medical Journal Nutrition, Prevention & Health, most medical professionals receive less than two hours of nutrition education during their entire training. Lauren Rathbone, registered dietitian, tells us how Best Food Forward, an initiative by The School of Artisan Food is filling this gap by offering a practical, enjoyable and unique learning environment to upskill health and medical professionals in food and health.

The Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count took place at the beginning of August. Over 92,000 people put on their walking boots and counted 1,571,619 butterflies from 21 species. Butterflies and moths are important to a healthy ecosystem and Tim Martin from Eating Better alliance member Farm Wilder shows how an abundance of butterflies can be part of beef farming in the UK.

Eating Better alliance partner TABLE’s brilliant new video with BBC Ideas tackles the myths surrounding beans, and explains how beans are unsung kitchen heroes. Jacquelyn Turner at TABLE tells us more about how the video came to life.

Our Sourcing Better Checked Out reviewed retailers’ published commitments against Eating Better’s Sourcing Better framework and found that they often lack sufficient policies and reporting to deliver on goals. Eating Better alliance member Feedback’s new report ‘Greenwash Grocers’ has revealed that greenwashing is rife across the UK supermarket sector. Liam Lysaght, campaigner at Feedback UK, tells us more about their findings.

We are excited to announce the appointment of three new trustees to the Board of Eating Better. Here we introduce Kristin Bash, Liz Gadd and Shaleen Meelu, and hear their motivation for joining the Board.

Eating Better’s newest alliance member The Woodland Trust is hosting the UK’s first Agroforestry Show in September. Helen Chesshire explores the importance of agroforestry in the transition to healthier and more sustainable food and farming in the UK.

To mark International Youth Day on the 12th of August, we spoke to landworker and FLAME coordinator Camile El-Maawiy to hear about the new and dynamic grassroots food movement orchestrated by young people.

The Climate Change Committee’s latest Progress Report to Parliament highlights how the UK is falling short on reducing domestic emissions from all sectors and failing to facilitate a shift to healthy and sustainable diets.

South Asian Heritage Month seeks to highlight the diverse heritage and cultures that continue to link the UK with South Asia. In this blog, Sareta Puri, chef at Eating Better alliance member Made in Hackney, explores the link between kitchari, colonisation and her own experience of the ancient Indian life science of Ayurveda.

Pig and poultry production in the UK is heavily dependent on imported soy from South America which has widespread impacts. Soy No More, a new report from the Landworker’s Alliance, Pasture for Life, Sustain and Hodmedods, emphasises the need to transition away from soy, and increase UK pulse production. This will only be achieved by shifting diets to less meat and more pulses.

Food is often a glue that brings together different cultures and people to build strong and supportive communities. Migrateful is a UK charity and community cooking school which supports asylum seekers, refugees and migrants on their journey to integration and independence through supporting the running of cookery classes. Halima Aro, one of the Migrateful's Nigerian chefs, shows how simple changes can be made to traditional recipes to add more plants to your plate.

Our report ‘Sourcing Better Checked Out’ found a lack of effective sourcing policies to support local soil health on farms. We found no publicly available reporting on specific soil health indicators, or policies to limit insecticidal veterinary medication use that is harmful to soil health.