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Children's health and food

New national partnerships to tackle childhood obesity

8 February 2019
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2 min read
Georgia Burke
Digital Communications Officer

One of our goals as an urban health foundation is to reduce the inequality in childhood obesity rates in Lambeth and Southwark. We know children in lower-income areas are twice as likely to be obese than children in more affluent neighbourhoods. 

To make a change at a local level, we sometimes have to make a change nationally. That’s why we’re forging new national partnerships to test solutions to childhood obesity in inner-city areas.

 

Working with retailers for healthier shopping baskets

We’ve partnered with the Consumer Good Forum to test its health and wellness initiative, ‘Collaboration for Healthier Lives’. This is the first time the initiative will be tested in the UK.

The collaboration brings together some of the largest retailers and manufacturers, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Danone. With them, we’ll test ways to move people towards healthier shopping baskets.

The collaboration aims to help customers and employees access healthier options. We’ll trial changes both in-store and online, including promotions on fruit and vegetables throughout Lambeth and Southwark.

Our Collaboration for Healthier Lives in numbers

600,000

people are likely to be reached over the course of the pilot

239

local stores will be involved through the initiative

Challenging unhealthy food advertising

Findings from the Food Foundation also show that 98% of food advertising budgets promote unhealthy products. 

In an attempt to counter this, campaigning initiative Veg Power and ITV have joined forces to create ‘Eat them to defeat them’. This new campaign advertises fruit and vegetables, targeted at families.

The national campaign looks to reach 75% of UK families to change the way the nation thinks and feels about vegetables. The aim is to inspire the public, especially children, to eat more of them. Ads run through to the end of March 2019 during primetime shows on ITV.

We’re supporting the partnership by evaluating the success of the campaign in schools in Lambeth. As well as the advertising campaign, we’ll run activities in schools to promote and ultimately increase the consumption of veg.

Want to know more about how childhood obesity is being tackled in London? Find out more about London’s Child Obesity Taskforce.