Finding ways to fix the UK’s food system

Our research features extensively in evidence developed through a UK-wide project aimed at making the nation’s food healthier, fairer and greener
Hands on fruit and veg fresh street community
A fruit and vegetable voucher scheme and a programme promoting the use of more fish in our diets are among the Plymouth initiatives that feature in newly-published evidence aimed at making the nation’s food healthier, fairer and greener.
The evidence is the culmination of the £47.5 million Transforming UK Food Systems (TUKFS) project, which set out to transform the UK food system by placing healthy people and a healthy natural environment at its centre.
The results have been published in a special issue of the Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions B, titled Transforming terrestrial food systems for human and planetary health.
It makes 27 recommendations that offer practical routes for governments, retailers, caterers, researchers and communities to act now while building capacity for long-term systems change.
The report references three projects developed and delivered at the University of Plymouth, as part of ongoing work to ensure everyone in the city has opportunities to access sustainable sources of healthy food regardless of their circumstances.
All the projects are led by Dr Clare Pettinger , Associate Professor in Public Health Dietetics, who is actively engaged in community-focussed research around food systems, poverty and social justice.

The importance of food to society is often underestimated.

It is much more than simply ensuring people don’t go hungry – food fosters a sense of community spirit, empowerment and social connection. From the work we have done in Plymouth, we know there are whole areas of the city whose access to healthy and affordable food is limited. The initiatives we have developed in conjunction with local residents and organisations have gone some way to changing that – and people’s perceptions – and if they can be rolled out on a national scale that would be amazing.

Clare PettingerDr Clare Pettinger
Associate Professor in Public Health Dietetics

Healthy food and healthy communities

The projects referenced in the new evidence include The Plymouth Fish Finger , which was funded through TUKFS’ FoodSEqual Plymouth programme and aims to increase fish intake for local residents while also making use of low-value and underutilised species caught by the city’s fishing industry.
Based on its success, the report called on local and national governments to support place-based supply chain innovation and social enterprise, incorporating community action to increase effectiveness and uptake.
There is also the Fresh Street Community project, a voucher scheme delivered in Whitleigh which gave communities access to fortnightly fruit and vegetable parcels and has seen an increase in healthy food consumption.
The report included a recommendation to expand voucher schemes to subsidise costs, making healthy and sustainable food more affordable and accessible to low-income households.
It also recommended making co-production the default process for decision-making that impacts on communities, as a means of better engaging local residents in food related discussions and innovations.
Vegetables arranged in a display of baskets

FoodSEqual Plymouth

Plymouth Fish Finger on a plate

The Plymouth Fish Finger

Young girl making a zine with a parent for the FoodSEqual project

Healthy and sustainable food systems in Plymouth

Transforming UK Food Systems (TUKFS) 

The TUKFS programme was launched in response to the fact that the way the UK produces, sells and eats food is fuelling major problems – from rising diet-related disease and the cost-of-living crisis to climate change, biodiversity loss and soil degradation.
The impacts reach beyond public health, affecting the economy, people’s livelihoods, and the resilience of food businesses. The TUKFS programme is attempting to tackle many of these issues.
The programme’s key recommendations, which could offer timely evidence and recommendations for consideration as the Government's food strategy develops, include:
  • Healthier school breakfasts: trials show children accept higher-fibre bread when it’s offered. Simple tweaks could help close the ~6g average “fibre gap” in UK school children’s intake.
  • Make healthy food more affordable: expand voucher schemes for low-income households to improve access to affordable, healthy and more sustainable options.
  • Clear, combined labels at a glance: a new “Sus-Health Index” could standardise and simplify food labelling to provide a pragmatic indicator of a food or meal’s combined nutritional and environmental value to guide shoppers.
  • Make surplus food work harder: move from guidance to legislation so usable “waste” food is redistributed by default to disadvantaged groups, potentially helping thousands of families.
  • Lower-carbon hospital meals, with no recipe changes needed: smartly swapping dishes on menus could cut carbon emissions from meals by ~19.5% and reduce saturated fat by ~15.7% across NHS sites.
  • Put more UK-grown pulses on plates: incentivise British beans and peas – healthier, climate-friendly and a boost for UK farmers.

Food is at the heart of our health, our environment, and our economy. These recommendations show the UK can act now, with practical steps that make food fairer, greener and more resilient. Getting food right can help address some of the biggest challenges of our times: increasing productivity, reducing climate change and tackling obesity.

Professor Guy Poppy
Director of the Transforming UK Food Systems Strategic Priorities Fund
 

The 2026 Guardian University Guide named us 6th in the UK for nutrition and food science:

dietetics