06/21
3 min read
We are one of the funders of The Food Foundation, a charity that aims to change food policy and business practice to ensure everyone across the UK can afford and access a healthy diet.
Response to the COVID-19 pandemic
Polling commissioned by the Food Foundation showed that food insecurity levels grew substantially in 2020. In the first few weeks of lockdown the number of adults who were food insecure was four times higher than pre-COVID levels, driven by a mixture of economic, supply and isolation issues.
The Food Foundation is part of footballer, Marcus Rashford’s Child Food Poverty Task Force, a coalition of charities and food businesses calling on government to implement three recommendations from Part 1 of the National Food Strategy.
Research undertaken by the Food Foundation was used to underpin the taskforce’s #EndChildFoodPoverty campaign.
The Food Foundation led a coalition of 20 civil society organisations to get behind the campaign, coordinating shared letters, media and parliamentary engagement and promoting a parliamentary petition that gained more than 1.1 million signatures.
In November 2020 the campaign was successful in securing an extension of the Holiday Activity and Food Programme to all children in receipt of Free School Meals in England and increasing the value of Healthy Start vouchers to £4.25. These new commitments are worth up to £400 million on children’s food and will improve the lives of 1.7 million children over the next 12 months.
Marcus Rashford spreading the word | Holiday Activities & Food Programme 2021
Children’s Right2Food campaign
In April 2019, the Children’s Future Food Inquiry report was launched in Westminster and the Children’s #Right2Food Charter was delivered to 10 Downing Street. The charter made five calls, including a healthy lunch guarantee and a new, independent Children’s Food Watchdog with young people in leadership roles. During Prime Minister’s Questions, the then Prime Minister, Theresa May was asked to meet the Food Foundation’s young food ambassadors.
On the day of the final report’s launch, Dame Emma Thompson accompanied the Young Food Ambassadors to Downing Street, where the report was delivered to No. 10. Subsequent launches were also held in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
As a result of raising the profile of the report and Charter in Westminster, the team have developed strong relationships with government departments and the Young Food Ambassadors are meeting regularly with officials and Ministers to discuss progress.
The government also confirmed that it would start measuring household food insecurity levels on an annual basis. The first official government statistics on food insecurity levels were published in the Food Resources Survey in March 2021.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the Food Foundation’s Children’s Right2Food Campaign reported on children’s food insecurity in real-time, including lived-experience testimony. This research was widely used by MPs and Peers in addition to informing the Child Food Poverty Task Force campaign.
Throughout the pandemic, the Food Foundation have worked to champion youth voice and lived experience. Their Young Food Ambassadors have been instrumental in campaigning for change, sharing their experiences with the media and meeting with government Ministers and the leader of the Labour Party.
Veg Power
The Food Foundation’s separate community interest company, Veg Power, supports an advertising fund for vegetables. Working in partnership with ITV during 2018, Veg Power ran a new national campaign to encourage children to eat vegetables – Eat Them to Defeat Them. The multi-award-winning campaign reached 40 million people. 57% of children said the advert made vegetables more fun and 46% of children who have seen the advert said they recently tried to eat more vegetables.
Eat Them To Defeat Them | ITV & Veg Power Campaign
Broken Plate
The Food Foundation’s annual flagship report, The Broken Plate is funded by the Nuffield Foundation and provides annual data on 10 metrics which explain the health and equity in our food system. The statistics in the report are regularly quoted in Parliament, and utilised by the media and civil society. The 2021 report is due to be published in July.
