Bringing together the ingredients for a healthier food system

Recipe for Change

Earlier this month, the Recipe for Change coalition launched. The campaign began with the recognition of a simple truth: too many families face challenges in accessing healthy diets due to the environment they find themselves in, with food businesses not incentivised to make their most affordable, available food also the healthiest. 

We know that small tweaks to the system to encourage healthier options can have big impacts. The Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL), introduced in 2018, set a levy for drinks producers and importers based on how much sugar was in their products – hoping to encourage them to change the recipe of their drinks and make them healthier. The Levy has been a striking success: taking 47,000 tonnes of sugar out of soft drinks every year, a 35.4% reduction. Importantly, prices for reformulated products stayed stable and sales even continued to grow – the negative economic impacts some elements of industry said were inevitable did not materialise. 

The SDIL shows that good regulation can work for health and for food companies. And while it signalled progress, there is still more to be done. 95% of children still eat more sugar than is recommended, because the products which are most marketed and freely available still contain too much of it. 

So Recipe for Change, with our support, is calling for the SDIL model to be expanded to foods high in fat, salt and sugar. We want to encourage companies to make tweaks to their recipes, make their products healthier, and ultimately ensure the foods most readily available on shelves across the country are as healthy as can be. Alongside expanding Free School Meals, it’s further recognition that what surrounds us, shapes our health – and that there is an important role for policymakers to ensure those surroundings work for everyone, regardless of where they live. 

What’s next?

Whether in schools or on high streets, momentum is building around making long overdue changes to our food system. With a general election forthcoming, there is now a key opportunity for the next government to make policy which will have potentially transformative changes on the health of children and families.  

We’ll be continuing to work with partners to make the case for those changes, starting by attending the political party conferences this month. If you’re there, come and join us, and help us advocate for a better, healthier, more equitable food system. We’re asking government to: 

• Incentivise a healthier food industry, making the easiest and most affordable options the healthiest. This includes considering expanding the successful Soft Drinks Industry Levy to foods high in fat, salt and sugar to encourage companies to reformulate their least healthy products.  
• Expand Free School Meal entitlement to include all children from families in receipt of Universal Credit, recognising that all children have a right to nutritious food at school, regardless of where they live.