Overview

Consumers are encouraged to follow a healthy diet, as recommended by national dietary guidelines. However, the food systems as it is designed, does not support those healthy diets. Using dietary guidelines to inform wider food policies, rather than focusing solely on behaviour change could help to shift this, and foster a more coherent approach to promoting healthy and sustainable diets. To do this a dietary gap assessment was carried out for the UK, comparing how the food supply in the UK aligns with the national dietary guidelines, the Eatwell Guide. This highlighted a lack of fruit and vegetables, particularly when looking at domestic production. 

By identifying these discrepancies, we can now work towards addressing them. The aim is to ultimately improve the availability of healthy diets for consumers, and to make the healthy choice the easy choice. If the food supply does not support healthy diets, this can ultimately have knock-on effects for access to these healthy foods. 

The publication linked to this work can be found here.

Key actors

This project was initiated by academics, but would ultimately involve consumers, policy makers, farmers, and the wider food industry, as we would all need to make changes to shift the food supply and in turn, food environments, to be more supportive of healthy and sustainable diets. 

Alignment with the EAT-Lancet Commission 

• While this work focuses on national dietary guidelines, the same principles could apply to the EAT-Lancet diet.

• Looking at food policies through the lens of availability and affordability of recommended healthy and sustainable diets for the public.

• Links with Strategy 1 + 2 of the 2019 commission to shift towards consumption of healthy diets, and to shift agriculture and policies towards production of healthy diets.

• Providing evidence to inform policies which shape the food environment for consumers. 

This research has been shared on FAO webinars, inaugural lectures for food systems training programmes, and with government officials.

Lessons Learned

Discrepancies between national and international datasets for domestic production and trade of food. Often international datasets are useful as they are open accesses and in a format that is easily comparable across different countries. There needs to be better transparency about how national datasets on food production and trade are collected, and more data needs to be available, particularly for animal feed. 

Next steps

• Share work more widely with policymakers and farmers.

• Participate in government consultations

• Have recommended this type of analysis is included in regular Food Security Reports in the UK and work towards moving the food supply closer to recommended healthy diets

For more information contact: Niamh Kelly at Niamh.Kelly.2@citystgeorges.ac.uk