Health and wellbeing

Why it is important

Food is essential for health and wellbeing.

Eating good, healthy, and nutritious food helps to keep us well, protecting both our physical and mental wellbeing.

Knowing and understanding what to eat, along with the practical skills needed to prepare healthy and balanced food are all skills that we believe should be universal.

There are many influences that affect what we eat daily. Evidence shows that our environment and living conditions are key to this. Good food might be less visible, harder to afford or access. These conditions are not equally experienced and are often related to existing inequalities present in our city.

We can improve health and wellbeing by working together to find solutions, remove barriers, improve quality of life, become more socially connected and less lonely through food.

By supporting and creating the conditions that allow more of us to eat healthy, nutritious and tasty food the Leeds Foods Strategy aims to give children in Leeds the best possible start and help everyone to live healthy, independent lives for longer.

Food choices that are good for us tends to be better for the planet too. Meeting these objectives will accelerate our city’s journey to net zero—reducing the future health impacts that we know climate change will cause.

Our plan

Objective 1

Ensure people of all ages know how to access, prepare, and eat food that supports health and wellbeing.

The first step to eating well is understanding what to eat, how much of it, and having the practical skills required to buy and prepare good food. This understanding also needs to be tailored to an individual’s culture, faith, income, community, and stage of life.

The NHS-recommended Eatwell guide shows how much of different food groups are needed to achieve healthy, and balanced eating—except where a health professional has advised otherwise. Other tools, such as the School Food Plan and 5 A Day campaign, also exist. Understanding and having an awareness of these recommendations are some of the first steps to eating healthier. This will need to be considered across the different stages of life. For example, the importance of promoting breastfeeding and nutrition in the early years.

We will work across sectors to create more opportunities to develop and learn the skills needed to eat healthier. This could include meal planning, budgeting and food preparation. We can raise awareness of how to access support for heathier eating across our city, enabling the opportunity and capability to achieve EatWell guide recommendations.

Objective 2

Champion community food initiatives that support healthier eating.

Alongside working with partners, community-led initiatives will have a vital role to play in furthering the objectives of the Leeds Food Strategy.

They enable people to develop cooking skills, grow food, and share food as part of activities like cooking skills, luncheon, and family clubs. They also bring people within communities together, which has huge social benefits.

There are already many great community-led initiatives taking place across Leeds. Further collaboration and community involvement will be key to building on these initiatives as we move forwards. We will work together to identify new funding opportunities and learn from what has worked well.

Objective 3

Change our city environment to help make healthier food more available and appealing.

Our environment influences what we eat. There are many opportunities to improve our environment to make healthy eating easier and more accessible. For some of us, good food is less visible and might be harder to access. It is important that we all have opportunities to eat well and diversely in our daily lives. Healthy food options should be readily available and affordable wherever we live, work, study, and relax.

Organisations and businesses advertising, providing, or selling food have a role in promoting and offering affordable, healthy, and nutritious food more prominently—creating more demand for good food. Those buying, making, or serving food could adopt the best practice Government Buying Standards for Food to make their food healthier, higher quality, and more sustainable.

Workplaces—where many of us spend a lot of our time—should also recognise their key role. In many workplaces, information and access to healthy food can be limited and this impacts people’s ability to consume a healthier diet.

Objective 4

Offer targeted support to those of us who are most at risk.

Healthy eating is important for everyone, but some of us are more at risk of developing health conditions and require additional support. Malnutrition is a major driver of diet-related health conditions including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease (heart diseases), stroke, and some cancers. Living with these conditions can be life changing and lead to premature death. Managing them costs our NHS more than £6 billion per year.

We can reduce diet-related deaths, improve the quality of life for those diagnosed, and save NHS resources by offering targeted support to help people most likely to develop these diseases. These ‘at risk’ individuals include those experiencing food insecurity or who live in a more deprived area.

Objective 5

Develop a skilled local workforce who advocate for healthier eating.

Many organisations in Leeds already promote information on eating well, but this can sometimes be complex due to the variety of information sources available. We also need to ensure the wider influences on healthy eating such as culture, income, and environment are always considered and addressed.

By developing a local workforce with all the skills necessary to advocate for, promote, and support healthier eating, we can empower professionals to have an even greater impact.

We believe that workforce development should include providing consistent information and support which is tailored to their audience and appropriate for their role.

Training opportunities shouldn’t be provided in isolation. Workers should also be equipped to identify and support opportunities that influence behaviour such as changing the food environment where they work.