Bags of Taste, bags of experience
Since beginning our work in 2014, we’ve won awards for supporting over 16,000 people experiencing food insecurity across the country. We know and understand the many challenges to enjoying a healthy diet faced by vulnerable individuals.
We use this expert insight to develop and deliver our evidence-based Mentored Home Cooking Programme, which supports and sustains dietary change.
A range of organisations across government, academia and the public sector draw upon our expertise; consulting, commissioning and partnering with us to achieve our shared goal of providing a sustainable, long-term solution to health and nutritional inequalities and food poverty.
“Also thank you for your kindness in preparing all the bags with love. We can see that it took time in the preparation of them. It was very thoughtful from you.
As a mother, I’m always buying and preparing things for my family to show them my care for them, but it is very rare to feel cared for. You made me feel cared for when I was opening the bags”
Well-practiced, and thoroughly practical
Over the past ten years, we have lovingly created countless ‘Bags of Taste’ – and prepared over 112,000 meals. Our bags. delivered direct to people’s doors, are filled with all the ingredients, resources and some of the basic equipment required to create a range of tasty, healthy low-cost meals.
Developed with and chosen by our participants, our recipes are delicious – and also healthy. To convince people to ditch the takeaway, they are equivalent or better tasting, easy to make, and significantly cheaper.
Inclusive, accessible, irresistible
Our delicious recipes alone are only part of the formula. In order to support the people we work with, they are combined with a personal mentor, alongside specially designed step-by-step instructional videos and materials that are accessible for people with learning difficulties, dyslexia, visual impairments and English as a second language.
The only requirements are a phone and a kitchen, which ensures that people without computers or home broadband aren’t excluded.
Working with vulnerable adults
We specialise in supporting those with extremely challenging lives who have tried unsuccessfully to improve their diets and are mainly eating takeaways and ultra-processed food or ready meals. They also face the additional challenge of cost, which worsens their situation, forming part of the food poverty cycle.
Specialisms
Many organisations commission us for our specialist programmes for people with different needs. We have worked with a very wide range of specialist cohorts including ex offenders, and people with learning disabilities, mental health conditions (including people recently released from residential mental health settings), disabilities like visual impairment, long term conditions like diabetes or fibromyalgia, or care leavers.
Representing, educating, and networking
As a leading authority on poor diets in vulnerable groups and nutritional inequality, part of Bags of Taste’s mission is to give a voice to the people we support, representing them in various contexts including: conferences and presentations on food poverty; All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG); advising the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) on the National Food Strategy, and working with national think tanks on solutions to food poverty.
Our work in academia includes giving lectures to medical students, helping them understand better the challenges facing future patients who need to change their diets.