When it comes to encouraging consumers to eat more fruit and vegetables, demanding too much too quickly has an unfortunate tendency to backfire, says Barbara Bray of Alo Solutions
Since long before founding food and nutrition consultancy Alo Solutions in 2014, Barbara Bray has set her mind on making safe, nutritious and sustainable food accessible to all, eventually earning her an MBE in 2019 for services to food nutrition.
For Bray, public health messaging on dietary habits, while well-meaning and necessary to an extent, have often had the opposite effect than intended, putting people off slow, incremental steps with its over-ambitious, one-size-fits-all goal.
“There’s only so much a person can change in their lives,” she points out, “and we’re not good at meeting people where they’re at. It’s OK to give them a final destination, but everyone’s final destination will be different.”
Bray believes a simple, more personal message of “Do better today than you did yesterday” would be more effective. “Health messaging needs to be tailored to the individual,” she explains. “You have to start with where they’re at. So what have they got access to? What can they do from a technical cooking point of view? What do they have time for? What adds more value to their diet? Is it fruit? Is it vegetables? Is it more green leafy vegetables? Because it has to fit with their likes, their culture and their environment.”
The focus, then, should be on gradual improvement rather than wholesale change. “It’s about progress rather than getting people to completely overhaul everything,” she says. “If you prefer fruit to vegetables, that might not be ideal, but it’s better that you eat more fruit than more biscuits.”
Bray points to affordability as a key factor shaping food choices, particularly in the current cost-of-living crisis. “Food isn’t always the biggest cost people face,” she says. “Housing and energy come first, and food is where people have flexibility. You can’t pay your landlord less, but you can spend less on food.”
So when it comes to sustainable diets, Bray urges caution around simplistic messaging, such as calls to reduce meat consumption. “It’s all very well telling people to eat less of something, but what are they replacing it with?” she asks. “If the alternative doesn’t provide the same nutrients, people may be doing themselves a disservice.
There can also be unintended consequences. “If someone swaps out meat, they often lose the vegetables that go with it as well,” she warns. “You might lose two portions of meat, but also four portions of vegetables.”
On food security, Bray challenges the idea that increasing local production alone can solve supply risks. “We can’t have local supplies without the global supply chain,” she said. “Fertiliser, seed and animal feed all come from overseas. Even if food is grown locally, the inputs are not.”
Despite the challenges, Bray sees encouraging signs, particularly in changing attitudes towards nutrition. “Younger generations are more interested in food than my generation was, and they understand the need for balance,” she says. “The habits they build now will carry through into older age, so it’s all about putting those foundations in place early.”
