Commission us: help change diets and change lives
People in poverty have the worst diets and the worst health outcomes; they die younger and get sicker than the rest of the population. Our courses are designed to address these issues, and they do.
The challenges
- 80% of the people that we work with rate their cooking skills as average to good; yet they are eating unhealthy food and their typical takeaway consumption costs them £900 a year.
- 50% of households in poverty contain someone with a disability; people on disability benefits are almost 400% more likely than the general population to suffer from a mental health condition. These are the cohorts we work with;
- 70% suffer from poor mental health and over 50% have long term medical conditions or disability.
Our results
- 86% of participants cooked more frequently after the course
- 70% of people identified ways of reducing food costs
- 80% of all students completed the course
- More than 62% go on to join one of our online continuing support groups, committing to maintaining the dietary changes we’ve helped them make.
The Challenges People Face
Because Bags of Taste is an authority on food poverty and dietary behaviour change, a wide range of public health and charity organisations commission us to provide our Mentored Home Cooking Course to their cohorts.
Our evidence-based course draws upon proven methods that create and sustain dietary change, producing a long-term behavioural intervention resulting in better physical, mental and financial health.
Our long term evaluations, undertaken by independent, expert nutritionists, show sustained long term change and significant reduction in takeaway consumption over 6 and 12 months.
Our tailored solutions
We work with our commissioners to tailor solutions to their cohorts’ specific needs, including dietary requirements (e.g. diabetics), and one-to-one mentoring for those that require it. We have run many specialist courses for everything from drug and alcohol rehabilitation, long term conditions, ex offenders, care leavers and people with learning disabilities.
What we deliver
- Complete delivery of a three-stage intervention that inspires and supports cohorts to change the way they cook, shop and eat, and to maintain these changes throughout their lives;
- An intervention expressly designed for people in poverty, which includes food, digital and fuel poverty
- A programme that inspires life changes that open doors to others: changing diets=changing lives
- We adapt our programme to meet special requirements, helping commissioners meet specific objectives.
- Ongoing support to participants that sustains commitment to the new habits we’ve helped them build;
- An online course accessible with low-tech equipment (just a phone) to ensure the most vulnerable participants (and their carers) can participate with no need even to leave the house;
- Highly-qualified and experienced mentors;
- Specialist support for people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia
- Powerful and proven long-term outcomes: improved physical and mental health and annual financial savings for students of more than ten times the cost of providing the course,
To discuss our shared objective of helping vulnerable people – and how our work can help you with yours..
