A steering group volunteered to work on the basic Canadean Research document ‘Health and Nutrition in the Public Sector’ that you will all have received in May as a pdf attachment to an e-mail. We met on July 11th to take in all submitted feedback and discuss the next step.
It was agreed that much of the data was very useful in building an evidence-based case for our three key aims:
• lifetime nutrition standards
• protected mealtimes
• appointment of a food and health ‘Tsar’
However, the group felt the cradle-to-grave presentation had too many gaps and was not the most forceful way of getting the core messages across.
We have decided now to focus the commentary alongside the data on three key areas:
• Malnutrition/poor nutrition – what is the cost in health terms; what is the financial cost of treating the results (this will look in particular at obesity, Type 2 diabetes, malnutrition and links between nutrition and educational achievement, behaviour, recovery from ill-health, dementia etc)
• Public sector – where the Government and local authorities have responsibility for feeding people and therefore influence (this will look at how many people the state feeds – broken down by sector – and how many meals a day that is, etc)
• Spending plans – if £XXm is spent now to improve nutrition then £XXbn could be saved in future NHS spending to treat the consequences of poor diet (this will look also at learning & attainment, re-offending rates in prison, reduction in mental illness in elderly and improved health in all areas of life)
This is now being reworked by the research team with the addition of some dedicated consumer research they will shortly be carrying out into attitudes to healthy eating, awareness of what constitutes poor diet, knowledge of things like 5-a-Day.
The steering group plan to meet again on September 19th to comment on/approve the result of this new approach.
And we are actively pursuing a launch in London of the final document in late November to catch the political elite on their return from the party conference season.
More details on this as soon as they are confirmed.
Regards
David Foad