Food on a budget

Posted by Andrew Wadge on July 18th 2007 in Supporting consumer choice

This week the Agency published the findings of a major survey of the diets of materially-deprived consumers. This has been a huge piece of work, but with our survey partners, the National Centre for Social Research, King's College London and University College London, we have generated an evidence base that will support work here and elsewhere for years to come. 

The results are fascinating – as much for what we didn’t find as for what we did.  Going into the survey many thought we would find restricted access to choice and a lack of confidence in cooking skills leading to extremely poor diets.  We didn’t.  We found that most people in this group were confident about their skills, had reasonable kitchen facilities and access to large supermarkets.  There’s an old joke about giving someone a fair trial before we hang them that we all should keep in mind when approaching research.

The picture isn’t all happiness and light though.  When we looked at the diets of this group we found too little fruit and vegetables being eaten, not enough oily fish and too much saturated fat and sugar. 

These are much the same problems that we find in the population as a whole, although some are slightly accentuated. 

To take an example, on average, the people we surveyed were eating about two portions of fruit and vegetables a day, which is well below the recommended five a day. 

Across the country as a whole, average consumption is a little under three portions a day so while it might look grim for the group surveyed here, as a nation we have nothing to write home about.

We’re going to be looking at these results in detail with our partners and stakeholders in Government and outside, and considering how we build on the evidence we have gathered. 

We’ve found some familiar problems, some of which are more accentuated than in the population as a whole.  This emphasises the importance of initiatives that help everyone to achieve and maintain a healthier balanced diet – things we’re already working on, such as clear front-of-pack nutritional labelling, product reformulation and promoting healthier food choices. 

Other surveys of consumer attitudes have shown that the message on what people should be eating is getting through successfully, but this survey shows again that many people are choosing not to follow it.  In looking at diet and nutrition messages and the strategies we use to help people take them on board, we may find ourselves looking not only at what we say but increasingly at how we say it and what actually gets us to change our ways.  I look forward to the debate.

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Lessons learned?

Posted by Jade Clark (not verified) on 10/08/2007 - 14:18

With reference to lessons learned and the action taken from this survey, do we really need to focus on 'not only at what we say but increasingly at how we say it'? 35% of men and 44% of women reported they would like to change their diet. This clearly indicates their awareness of healthy eating messages, however, the survey also shows this group to be falling short of achieving a healthy diet. Certainly education and our vehicle of delivery is important, but we can educate all we want and people still won't necessarily change behaviours. Surely we need to shift the focus and really concentrate and pour our efforts into facilitating behaviour change. This is probably a scary prospect as it likely means throwing a great deal more energy, time and money into much smaller scale, group specific projects and looking at wider areas such as price and availability of healthy versus unhealthy foods. Let's not be wimps about this, surely we need to rethink our strategies; education is only a small (but very important) part of improving people's health.