Henry Dimbleby National Food Strategy Report -Food, Glorious, Food
Why it matters to you and your families food future
You may have heard of a document called the National Food Strategy, published a couple of weeks ago. Just in case you don’t know, it’s an independent review examining England’s entire food system, something that hasn’t happened for over 75 years. The influence #realbread has on your health, immunity, and wellbeing is a subject Lovingly Artisan has committed to, and perhaps this is why we are motivated in sharing the findings.
Authored by Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon chain of restaurants and the Sustainable Food Network and was later appointed as a lead non-executive board member of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in March 2018.
The strategy focused on the urgent food challenges facing our food system and how we need to work together across Government and industry. Creating a system that is good for both the health of people and the planet.
Why has this report been commissioned?
As a society, we need to tackle several quite significant issues;
- The movement of food from the farmer to the processor
- Retailer and consumer relationships
- Our widely interconnected food system
- The impact on our environment,
- Health and wellbeing
- Jobs and income levels
- How families eat and live together
There’s no doubt that we live in an ever-changing world, one in which global factors such as climate change, geopolitics, population growth, and technology will all inevitably influence how we adapt and secure our food systems for the future.
What’s clear is that no part of our economy matters more than food.
It’s vital to life and, for around one in seven of us, it’s the source of our income. The decisions we make about our food systems have a direct impact on our lives, our health and wellbeing, as well as what we eat.
The role food plays in our lifestyle choices.
- It shapes a large part of our cultural identity
2 .Defines our landscapes and our societal structures
- Influences our cooking and eating together, one of the most defined communal acts we undertake.
The character of the landscape defines how the food is reared, produced, and grown by the very farmers that manage the land they tend Every day businesses up and down the country provide us with an abundant choice of safe and reasonably priced food, creating millions of jobs in the process, as well as providing us with a vast range of foods unimaginable to our great grandparents. However, how we produce, distribute, market and consume many of those foods raises a significant number of tough questions.
Questions the Government can not avoid. Our Government is ultimately responsible for a myriad of actions that shape the nation’s relationship with food.
For example
- How our food is grown and where
- The rearing of livestock
- How our food is produced
- The sales and marketing regulations of the food
- What’s determined and featured within the national curriculum
- Chosen to be consumed within our hospitals
- They decided the availability of migrant labour
- The public health messages impacting obesity.
Consequently, the need for Government to review and rethink its influence and role is genuine.
It’s not just the case that we need to reconsider how food and drink, as our most significant manufacturing industry, fits into the Government’s broader Industrial Strategy. There are other urgent and inescapable policy questions with which Government must grapple. Globally, we are the first generation more likely to die as a result of lifestyle choices.
Poor diets contribute to around 64,000 deaths every year in England.
1/ Escape the Junk Food Cycle and protect the NHS
2/ Reduce diet-related inequality
3/ Make the best use of our land
4/ Create a long-term shift in our food culture
The report calls for “escaping the junk food cycle” to improve general health and reduce the strain on the NHS. To read the National Food Strategy, visit: https://www.nationalfoodstrategy.org/ The Government now has six months to respond with a White Paper on what it will commit to tackling some of the most pressing issues of our time.
Join us in our quest to support local farmers, farmer’s markets, British flour millers and producers. Shop with us each Friday at Altrincham Market, making it your mission to visit Kendal Farmers Market too.
Kendal Farmers Markets – Save the dates.
27th August
24th September
29th October
26th November
17th December
We might not be able to control what others do or don’t do, but what we can do as northern folk is stand alongside those with good and wholesome food motives.
A heartfelt post by passionate food and farming lovers
