Young people taking a stand for their #Right2Food

Guest post by Dr Pamela L Graham, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Northumbria University

Image courtesy of Children's Future Food Inquiry via twitter 

“It’s time to act! It’s time this country gave every child the right to food!” Such a powerful statement. But, these aren’t the words of a politician addressing Parliament or a celebrity on a new mission to make a difference. These are the words of Corey - a 15-year-old, Young Food Ambassador who sat on a stage in Westminster and bravely told an audience about her experiences of food insecurity. As a carer for her disabled mum, Corey takes responsibility for making sure her family have access to food by collecting food parcels when needed and sharing her own meals to make sure there is enough food to go around.

This was just one account shared at the launch of the Children’s Future Food Inquiry report on 25 April 2019. As a researcher involved in work around food insecurity, I was invited to attend this event. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend lots of fantastic events on children’s food in recent years, but this one was by far the most thought-provoking.

The event attracted some high profile speakers, including Children’s Future Food Inquiry Ambassador, Dame Emma Thompson. She spoke passionately about the need for us as adults to listen to what children are saying about their circumstances and take action to make a change. Children and Families Minister, Nadhim Zahawi, also addressed the audience acknowledging the importance of children’s views. But then came what Dame Emma Thompson described as “the real VIPs” and six Young Food Ambassadors took to the stage and I was blown away!

Image courtesy of Dr Philippa Whitford via twitter 

I was struck by the confidence and clarity with which these young people spoke. They weren’t there telling their stories to gain sympathy; they meant business and were there to demand action. They gave accounts of parents who struggled to make ends meet, working yet still unable to attain a healthy diet. They questioned the motives of a society where unhealthy food is promoted to them through shiny promotions and easy access. They highlighted the stigma associated with food insecurity and the need to reduce this within food systems set up to support them. These young people know what they should be eating but have had enough of not being able to access it.

The young people highlighted policies and practices that hinder their access to healthy food. Policies and practices that were probably implemented by adults. As adults, I think we have a responsibility to use the knowledge, skills and resources we have to support young people to make a change, but this needs to be done with input from the young people who are affected by these changes.

Young Food Ambassadors talk about their experiences

A great example of the difference that can be made when children are listened to was described by Richard ‘Beef’ Frankland from Prospex Youth Centre (who stars in the film above). He talked about how the staff at the youth centre began providing toast and progressed to cooking full meals, all at the request of the young people. The young people are also growing herbs, trying new foods and learning about where their food comes from in response to their queries about why the vegetables being prepared for cooking at the youth centre are covered in soil. From research I’ve worked on previously around breakfast and holiday clubs, I know that Beef’s work is just one example of the difference school and community groups are making by listening to the needs of those they are working with.

I left the event wanting to do more. Reading the Children’s Future Food Inquiry report on the way home, I found that research I’ve been involved in with the Healthy Living lab at Northumbria University had been cited. It’s always nice to see your work cited, knowing it’s not filed away unread, but this occasion was bitter sweet. Children are still going hungry and missing out on valuable nutritious food so there’s still more work to do. Going forward, I’m keen to do more research around food insecurity involving young people and people like Beef, who know their communities and are committed to making a difference.

From the office to Eastern Africa: how digital technologies can be used to assess diet

Guest post by Emma Foster, Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition, Human Nutrition Research Centre, Newcastle University

Life in academia can be tough at times. It can be difficult to switch off, the list of tasks can seem never ending and just when you think things are going to quieten down along comes that call for proposals that you simply can’t miss.

I’ve worked at Newcastle University for almost 20 years now and throughout that time my research has focused on improving how we measure dietary intake. In the early years this involved going into school and talking to children and parents, which was always good fun. More recently we’ve been working with adults developing online systems for measuring intake along with colleagues at Open Lab. The work is really interesting and I’m enormously proud of the system we have produced but life is predominantly office based now.

Earlier this year though, my enthusiasm for work was suddenly re-ignited with a slight change in focus for my research. For 12 days in February I left behind my 6 year old son (bad mummy!) and my husband and headed off to do some research looking at how digital technologies could be used to assess dietary intake in Africa. Along with my colleague - research associate Maisie Rowland - I headed to Tanzania to learn about the food environment there, looking at the range of foods available, and the way things are cooked, served and eaten. We also looked at the uptake of technology such as use of smartphones and internet access. We started our visit in Moshi near Kilimanjaro (every time I say Kilimanjaro I still break into a smile). The weather there was lovely and warm and the people were too. We’d been put in touch with a school teacher, Amina who showed us around two primary schools and one secondary school in the area. Seeing the cooking facilities at the schools was really eye opening. The schools all cooked over wood fires.

I was amazed at the secondary school kitchen; this was what I had expected to find in the homes in poorer rural communities but not in a large (700+ pupils) secondary school. Yet the staff managed to cook enough food to feed all of the students and had taken the time to provide information for us on the common local foods.

Every day for school lunch the children got maize and beans, one of the schools added oil to the mixture to make sure the children got some fat in their diet. Children brought a bowl, plate or other container (some had margarine tubs) and most ate with their hands. The children ate their food outside. Amina invited us over for dinner one evening. “I thought I’d cook you banana stew and elephant leg” she said, monitoring our faces for a reaction. Politely we said “that sounds lovely” but we clearly looked a bit worried before Amina roared with laughter and told us that elephant leg was a vegetable….it just got its name because it apparently looks a bit like one!

Before we left Moshi we got to tour the local food markets, where people buy the majority of their food. There was very little in the way of pre-packaged foods consumed.

Our next stop was Dar es Salaam where we worked with the Tanzanian Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC). We conducted two workshops, one with nutritionists, dietitians, food technologists and public health workers at the TFNC, which Maisie and I ran in English, and one with a rural community group which the TFNC researchers ran in Swahili. Through the workshops we gathered lots of information about the foods consumed and how these differed between regions, the time of year, celebrations and droughts, and how people would share recipes and consume foods. We learned that African power cuts can last a whole day - the workshop at the TFNC was done in 35 degree heat with the power (and therefore air conditioning) off! We discovered that the foods we were served for breakfast at the hotel were usually only reserved for celebrations for the local population.

We took our research very seriously and ate at a wide variety of restaurants, cafes and street food stalls. The food over there was really tasty. For breakfast every day we had an amazing beef stew that we got the recipe for. I’ve tried to re-create it but mine isn’t quite up to scratch, I think it’s probably to do with the way that they rear the cows rather than my cooking skills....

We plan to work with the staff at TFNC to put in a proposal to the Global Challenges Research Fund with the aim to develop a technology based method of assessing dietary intake that will enable them to run what would be the first National dietary survey for Tanzania.

….Now back to the office for some proposal writing to get us back out there. Next time I might even take the family with me!

A blether with Scotland’s fast food vendors

Guest post by Michelle Estrade, Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP)

In June 2014 the Scottish Government published a voluntary framework, entitled Supporting Healthy Choices, which encourages the food industry to take action towards offering healthier food choices to consumers. The recommendations include guidance on promotional activities, healthier cooking practices, and types and portion sizes of foods offered. Just after the recommendations were drafted, I sat down with owners of independent fast food shops in lower-income neighbourhoods across Scotland to discuss how they felt about offering healthier menu options. They shared many thoughts on tradition, customer demand, and the deprived neighbourhood context, suggesting that food vendors in disadvantaged areas would need additional incentives and assistance in order to implement healthy menu guidelines and ensure that their customers don’t miss out on the potential benefits.

The shop owners I talked to took pride in their menus, using words like “traditional” and “proper” to describe the foods they sold. Because they felt food was being prepared the proper way, there was a sense of reluctance to change cooking methods. One example was the use of traditional beef dripping for frying, rather than healthier oil alternatives. During our conversation, the food vendor I was interviewing looked at me quizzically and asked: “I mean, how can we say we’re traditional if we’re cooking in palm oil or rapeseed oil?”

Most places I visited had a well-developed sense of niche, which was a common reason for offering only certain types of foods and not others. When I asked about the possibility of adding other [healthier] options, a fish and chip shop manager gave me a cheeky smile and quipped: “…they’re not coming here because they want fruit.” Again and again, the food vendors I talked to explained that they needed to respond to customer demand in order to keep their clients; competition was described as “cut-throat”, and the fear of losing business was palpable.

Indeed, price was viewed as a major barrier to offering healthier options to current clientele. The owner of a sandwich shop shared a personal example of the dilemma: “I don’t allow my kids to have fizzy juice, so I dinnae really like having it. I’d like to buy fresh juice, but it’s so expensive, you wouldn’t make any money. With the price you would have to charge, they wouldnae want to buy it.” Another told me: “We’re barely making a profit just now. If we were anywhere else we’d be able to charge more, but in [this neighbourhood], most of our customers are on a limited budget...”

I went into this project assuming that the major problem I would uncover would be a lack of awareness and knowledge about healthy eating. All we would need to do is help food vendors realise how important it is to get people to make healthier food choices, and they would be eager to jump on board with guidelines like Supporting Healthy Choices. What I found though was a much more complex set of circumstances at play – a constant struggle to cope with economic pressures, intertwined with the enduring characteristics of the neighbourhoods in which these people did business. Reflection on this has helped me realise that perhaps what needed uncovering was my own lack of awareness about the pivotal role of environment and context. Too often, I think, researchers are eager to jump into intervention mode and change what is happening without first thoroughly understanding why it’s happening.

Michelle is presenting at the Fuse Quarterly Research Meeting - More than enough on our plates: tackling the takeaway food diet at source tomorrow (Thursday 30 April).

You’ve lost that curry feeling: smell, memory and food research

Posted by Duika Burges-Watson

Grant Achatz, a survivor of head and neck cancer and one of the world’s most adventurous chefs, serves a dish in his Chicago restaurant Alinea that frequently makes people cry. Why would pheasant with shallots, cider and burning oak leaves do this and why should we care about some zizzy restaurant food? The principle is based on a neurological fact – our olfactory system is linked directly to the amygdala-hippocampus complex – the ‘substrate of emotional memory’ (Herz 2004, Soudry et al 2011). Research shows that autobiographical memories evoked by odour are significantly more emotional than those recalled with visual cues. It is sometimes called the Proust phenomenon – after a literary anecdote involving a Madeline biscuit and the recall of a powerful childhood memory. In Achatz’s restaurant, burning oak leaves are not eaten - they take you straight to the excitement of autumn.

Pheasant with shallots, cider and burning oak leaves

In the Fuse-led NIHR/RFPB-funded head and neck cancer ‘Resources for Living’ project, we have been running food play workshops to explore the potential of modern cooking techniques and ideas to improve survivors' eating and experience of food . In our workshop next week we are talking curry – it’s what many survivors have told us they miss the most.

As one of our survivors said:

The first meal I ever had with my husband was a curry. I had never been to an Indian restaurant until he took me in the early eighties. I couldn't believe the aroma the flavours and textures. He said he'd never seen anyone so small eat so much. I was hooked!

I used to hate it when people ordered their own curry and rice and put it all on their plate and didn't share. I liked to try a bit of everything to experience all the different tastes and textures. However I didn't like anything too hot and spicy. I found that too much heat from spice destroyed the rich flavours. So a Madras or anything hotter just seemed to lose taste.

The only thing I can eat now in an Indian restaurant is a bit of poppadum. It's a killer, watching my husband and daughter getting stuck in to a really delicious curry on the curry mile and me sitting with a glass of water. Help!

We will be using knowledge about food and memory, clever cooking skills and some of what social science can offer on food and eating, to create, and explore, a curry experience that cancer survivors can participate in. Curry is, after all, more than about the physical experience of eating. It’s where many Brits get to feel Britishness (speaking here as an Australian we do something similar with South East Asian food). We socialise around take-outs and eat-ins. Curry is also pretty intensely flavoursome, spicy and exciting to eat.

We knew when we started the ‘Resources for Living’ work that our research would have resonance beyond this patient group - head and neck cancer survivors have problems with chewing, swallowing, sore mouths, throat narrowing and damage, taste alterations, smell function decline and more (in various combinations) so their experiences are particularly relevant to understanding how we can cope with altered eating difficulties (think loss of taste and smell in ageing, neurological damage etc). But even for so called ‘normal’ eaters there is interest here. For starters (excuse the pun), do people with ‘normal’ eating habits talk about the relationship between food and emotion, food and thinking? This could be a component of food literacy, particularly in the context of modern manufacturing processes where odours can be created at will. Just think of the experience of supermarket shopping near the bakery section. Does the emotional trickery of circulating the odour of baking bread get you to buy more high fat/salt/sugar foods that you don’t need?

As people age, altered taste sensation can lead to all manner of new habits around food – how might the experience of smell be employed to re-engage those that have lost interest in food? Another example: taste disturbance amongst smokers is well documented; why don’t we employ food therapy to increase desire for a more flavoursome smoke-free life?

Remembering an odour memory yet? Perhaps not, but next time you are transported to a sweet childhood memory, perhaps you’ll notice the smell of it.

Can’t cook, or won’t cook?

Posted by Joel Halligan, Research Assistant, Institute of Health & Society, Newcastle University

On Monday of last week, Lady Jenkin, a conservative peer, claimed that poor people 'don’t know how to cook'. She suggested this as, in part, a cause of the socio-economic patterning of obesity in the UK, and what followed was outrage, denial, and indignant broadsheet readers; but, is she alone in thinking this, and is she right?

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington. Photo used in the article on the Daily Mail website

One only has to look at the reader comments on the web articles to see that many people agree with her, blaming obesity on ‘the laziness of the poor’. So, it seems as though many people think of this as assumed wisdom. It has been found that people who are less socio-economically favoured are more likely to be obese, so this must just be down to the fact that poorer people don’t know how to cook, right?

Well, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you – the evidence just doesn’t bear this out. We recently did some analysis of data from the UK’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey, and our preliminary results tell us that the vast majority of people who were sampled reported that they could cook ‘from scratch’ just fine, even those in the poorer segments of society. Now, I’m not saying that poor cooking skills might not be a contributing factor towards levels of obesity, but it’s not as straightforward as suggesting that cooking skills alone are the cause and that simply providing them would be a magic bullet. Ask yourself this: do you know anyone who can’t cook and is as thin as a rake, or anybody who regularly cooks yet is overweight?

Lady Jenkin also said that: “If people today had the cooking skills that previous generations had, none of us would be eating so much pre-prepared food.” Again, this might seem like a nice, intuitive proposition, yet it ignores the complexity behind the shift that has occurred in our cooking and eating habits over the past few decades. Is it that we, as a society, are eating more pre-prepared food because we can’t cook, or that fewer people cook less often because there is such an abundance of convenient alternatives?

Lady Jenkin also goes on to compare the cost of her bowl of porridge to the bowl of sugary cereals that they eat, but, as I’m sure many will have considered, the cost argument also isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. Yes, the basic raw ingredients might be cheaper, but what about the cost of fuel and ‘opportunity cost’? Microwaving a lasagne for 4 minutes is probably going to incur a considerably lower fuel cost than if one were to fry the onions and mince, boil the lasagne sheets, and then bake it in the oven for an hour, plus that hour might be the only time of the day somebody gets to spend with the family, or relax, or do other necessary chores. Plus there’s the consideration that stocking the cupboards with an armoury of staples, herbs and spices also isn’t cheap, nor are the utensils and equipment needed to cook ‘from scratch’, nor are the cookbooks for the recipes (and remember that not everyone has internet access and thus freely able to trawl BBC Good Food for ideas on how to use up that last bunch of curly kale).

I’m certainly not saying that there aren’t people out there who don’t know how to cook, and there is indeed lots of interest as to whether helping people to cook can improve people’s diets, although it’s yet to be definitively proven that giving people cooking skills gets them to eat better: The Evaluation Report of Jamie’s Ministry of Food; Evaluation of a cooking skills programme in parents of young children; and Impact of Cooking and Home Food Preparation Interventions Among Adults.

So, I hope that those who were quick to agree with Lady Jenkin might reconsider their position, and remember that there are many reasons why people cook and eat the way that they do, and that it isn’t as simple as saying that if everybody could suddenly cook then convenience food manufacturers would go bust. In my humble opinion, there is definitely a place for cooking skills, and I do believe that they are an invaluable skill to have, but I also accept that convenience food is just that, and that it is here to stay, and that we need to take a more holistic approach to improving our diets rather than just extolling one type of cooking and bashing the other.

Lastly, I also challenge people to challenge their own preconceptions of obesity, and ‘the poor’ - perhaps next time you talk to somebody who fits either of those criteria, don’t assume they can’t cook, instead ask them what they like to cook – you might be surprised at their answer.