Food systems thinking
Tackling the harms caused by alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy foods Citizens’ Jury
Hopkins Van Mil (HVM) worked with SPECTRUM: a research consortium funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership on a Citizens’ Jury on the commercial determinants of ill health. HVM co-designed with SPECTRUM and recruited, with the Sortition Foundation, two placed-based citizens’ juries in Glasgow.
The Tackling the harms caused by alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy foods Citizens’ Jury ran in two locations from May to August 2024. It involved 37 Jury members drawn from two specific areas of Glasgow. Each of these ‘mini-publics’ (20 Jury members in one area, 17 in the second) worked separately for two workshops with their group. They came together as a single Citizens’ Jury for their last workshop at the end of August 2024. Politicians, officials and advocates joined this last workshop to consider the Jury’s findings and their implications for policy making.
In both areas Jury members highlight the value in reducing the price of healthy foods. They also call for restrictions in advertising and how products are displayed and marketed. Members in Area One focus on taxes on unhealthy food and alcohol, and improving school nutrition as priorities for policy action. Members in Area Two called for a strengthening the planning and licensing laws in relation to harmful products. They want more to be done to restrict the 24 hour availability of unhealthy foods.
The Food Conversation
The National Conversation About Food was instigated by the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission in 2023. This report shares the findings from two dialogue locations: Cambridgeshire and Birmingham. It highlights participants’ urgent call for Government to intervene in food policy, to be brave and to consider inaction as a big a risk as inaction on climate change.
This process marks the beginning of a wider Food Conversation across the UK, beginning early in 2024. This has been a public dialogue across 10 UK locations launched in ‘lightening deliberation’ in March 2024. The workshops concluded in September this year. Reports on all four ‘waves’ of deliberation will be published in November 2024. The waves were:
Wave 1: Northumberland, South Yorkshire and East Kent
Wave 2: North and South Wales
Wave 3: South London and Cornwall
Wave 4: North and South Scotland, Northern Ireland
National Food Strategy
The Sciencewise public dialogue informed the National Food Strategy final report. It provides rich detail on how people view the food system and what changes they would like to see. It chimes with growing global calls for greater alignment between food systems and climate policy.
National Trade Conversation
A public dialogue co-designed with Which? The Consumer Association on post-Brexit trade deals.
What’s next for the future of our food, our health and our planet?
The Wellcome Trust - adult engagement through dramatised dialogue. In this innovative programme we worked with the theatre company Look Left Look Right, academics, scientists and specialists to bring to life the interaction between food, health and the environment. We worked with 175 participants in six locations across the UK to consider how the food system could work better for people and the planet. The findings informed Wellcome’s research in this area.
Food, nutrition & health challenges
A public dialogue report for BBSRC
