Banning junk food advertising is a step in the right direction, but when the whole environment is geared towards encouraging bad eating choices, there is a lot more that needs to be done.
Having worked with 4,500 participants in food poverty, and also lecturing medical students on health inequalities that largely arise from poor diets, we are well qualified to speak in this area.
Replicability is the key to scaling. Yet so many interventions are small scale and highly personalised; it takes enormously tailored, intensive interactions to effect change in people who need a high degree of support. We should know.
Talking with our participants has been one of the most important things behind the success of Bags of Taste. We’ve always been really interested in why they are not cooking – we’ve frankly surveyed the hell out of them (our pile of forms is almost 3ft high!!)