Caroline Drummond LEAF

Caroline Drummond

Well it is official, England is the 34th healthiest nation in the world, according to the recent Channel 4 documentary, ‘The World’s Best Diet’. Iceland topped the bill, closely followed by Italy and Greece. The secret to reducing the risk of diabetes and heart disease, offered no surprises: eat a good balanced and diverse diet, especially lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, quality meat and fish and not too much.

These findings echo much of what I found from my Nuffield Scholarship, titled: ‘What can farmers learn from science to improve the nutrition of our food?’ I travelled from Toronto to Taipei, looking at different approaches to diet, nutrition, science, farming techniques and met with a host of individuals and organisations. As Confucius says: “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance”, and how true that was for me. The more I delved into this area, with its complex array of marketing, processed foods, functional foods, biofortification, breeding and farming techniques, the less I realised I knew. What was very apparent was that if the farming sector is to really help improve the health of the nation, we need to be proactive in gearing up to produce a more nutritionally rich selection of fresh produce and livestock.

I used the humble pizza as an analogy for the average meal eaten by the majority of families during the week. Thus, I was able to look at, wheat, tomatoes and cheese in more detail. I also looked at behaviour change and the opportunities around community approaches to encourage healthier lifestyles.

With 66 per cent of males in the UK being obese or overweight and a cost of some £4 billion a year relating to the direct treatment of non-communicable diseases, it is evident that we are reaching a crisis in the population’s relationship with health and diet. Not a day goes past without a new diet scandal in the press. Furthermore, with a headline global target set by the World Health Assembly of a 25 per cent reduction in premature mortality related to non-communicable diseases by 2025, there is a lot to be done, and indeed, some great opportunities for the farming sector.

The challenge is a large one and I believe needs to be delivered in a staged way. In the short term, reformulation of processed foods is going to be critical and this is already being delivered in the UK through the Responsibility Deal run by government, together with the wider food industry. However, this will have no bite on its own. It has to be run alongside new breeding programmes and research around diverse and new crops in conjunction with imaginative education and communication initiatives, such as LEAF’s Open Farm Sunday. There also needs to be a really strong, strategic approach to developing food policy around health and nutrition, while building up new markets for farmers.

The opportunities are certainly there, but if the farming industry does not embrace them then the added value opportunities will be lost to others such as the processing and chemical sectors, as well as importers.

The full copy of Caroline Drummond’s Nuffield report is available to download here.