Liverpool eatright

Food Champion Application: Improving community diet and nutritionLiverpool City Council and PCT have created the ‘Eatright Liverpool’ project to help takeaway businesses and restaurants offer healthier dishes by suggesting ways to reformulate popular meals and by identifying inherently more healthy options.
Currently working closely with Liverpool John Moores University (in the research phase) on recipe development and evaluation, this ongoing project will also provide training for catering staff on food hygiene and nutrition. The provision of nutritional software for businesses to assess the nutrition content of their dishes is also being explored. If the research proves successful, participating establishments promoting the nutritionally improved meals will be entitled to display the ‘Eatright Liverpool’ Award Certificate.
Liverpool City Council Trading Standards Department (TSD) analysed 300 takeaway meals for various nutritional parameters. Many meals had excessive amounts of salt, fat and calories. One meal was found to contain nearly 5 times the RDA of salt for an adult (6g).
A study –“Survey of Food Habits and Attitudes in Liverpool” commissioned by Liverpool Primary Care Trust (Jon Dawson Associates, 2007) found that, of the residents interviewed, 39% eat takeaway meals or fast food once or twice a week. Importantly, 45% of the younger age groups (20-24 year olds) eat from these outlets once or twice a week. At these levels, takeaway food has become established as a regular part of the diet for Liverpool residents and as such plays a major role in public health. A comprehensive Literature Review (as yet unpublished) of 164 research and academic papers undertaken by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) for TSD resulted in a number of recommendations for further research to include

•A better understanding of the consumer –nutrient environment

•An understanding of the geographical provision of takeaway food in the city

•A consideration of points of purchase intervention - nutritional labelling or signposting

•Nutritional education for businesses and consumers

•Recipe development and reformulation to produce healthier options of popular meals

•Incentives or awards to engage businesses

For more information, please visit FOOD VISION

Developing Sustainable Food Chains Project

Around 1,000 food and drink supply chain businesses are getting involved with SWFD to make local produce more available in South West England’s major towns and cities.
The Project will create 20 new supply chains and develop seven toolkits to support future activity by SMEs by providing learning and information for local sustainable food and drink projects.
The Project is run for SW RDA, which is investing a total of £695,000 (£400,000 directly on delivery work and £295,000 on strategic added value, monitoring, evaluation & management and developing associated case studies, toolkits and replicable business models). The individual projects will collectively generate a further £1.7 million in direct, match and aligned funding.
The Project runs from August 2010 to December 2011 and is the culmination of the SW RDA’s framework programme of targeted intervention for the food and drink sector in South West England. Since 2008 the SW RDA has invested approximately £1.7 million in the food and drink sector.
To find out more and to get involved, click here

CAP budget status quo

Voting on a draft own-initiative report by German MEP Albert Dess (European People's Party), the committee said that the EU's farm budget should be kept at least at its current level when the policy is reformed from 2014, "in order to meet the challenges of food security, environmental protection and climate change". The CAP budget is currently worth €55 billion a year and amounts to 40% of the bloc's total annual spending.

The report represents the lawmakers' first response to a European Commission paper on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2020, published in November 2010.

Fairer distribution
The committee further noted that CAP money should be distributed more fairly between member states and farmers. They demanded that in future "each EU country should receive a minimum percentage of EU average payments," with direct payments reserved for "active farmers", the definition of which is yet to be agreed upon.
The 'old' member states of the EU-15 currently receive more financial support per farmer than the newer member states, and some of the payments go to wealthy landowners who do not necessarily use their land for production.
MEPs also backed Commission proposals to introduce a ceiling on direct payments per farmer and suggested that the size, the employment record and the degree of environmental protection of each farm should be taken into account when deciding on payments.

SOURCE AND MORE INFO: EUROACTIV

Workshop “Evidence on European Land Use”

Land Use and Land Use Change in Europe used to be mainly addressed from a thematic perspective. However, land-use characteristics are becoming increasingly multi-functional, crossing not only sectors but also administrative boundaries. This leads to an increasing demand for background information and institutional and administrative structures.
Following this demand the ESPON 2013 Programme started a project on European Land Use Patterns: EU-LUPA. In cooperation with this project a workshop was organized in order to shed some light on the various aspects related to Land Use and Land Cover in Europe and to bring together some important players in this field.
AimThe aim of the workshop was to share experiences, to transfer knowledge and to contribute to the debate on Land Use in Europe and ways in which its assessment can be approached. This facilitated a pan-European discussion and enabled the EU-LUPA project to present their perspective and progress, and discuss the validity of their results achieved so far.

Source: ESPON - Click here for more info

Fresh Ideas (East Brighton New Deal for Communities)

The initiative has set up several clubs, activities, workshops, and a fruit and vegetable voucher scheme, in order to increase access to a healthy diet and contribute to reducing levels of obesity. eb4U is a Government funded regeneration organisation for East Brighton. In 2000 the area was awarded £47.2 million of New Deal for Communities funding, which is to be spent over the next 10 years to help regenerate the area. Decisions about how the money should be spent are made by various boards and panels, which are made up in the majority by East Brighton residents.  The work is being lead by the health4all team, which is made up of a range of people from voluntary and statutory organisations in Brighton and Hove, and their role with local people and local organisations is to look at new ways of improving health in the area.
The Fresh Ideas worker has the responsibility of promoting healthy eating and developing access to fresh food products. The main aim is to increase access to a healthy diet and contribute to reducing levels of obesity (with access referring to affordability, awareness, acceptability and availability). The work carried out is based on the issues and concerns of local residents and these are conveyed  via a Food Interest Group (FIG), which has been set up. The Group consists of local residents, health visitors, and statutory representatives and during their meetings various requests and ideas are suggested upon which work is based.
For example one request was for a local affordable slimming club, and another was more accessible, affordable fruit and vegetables. These projects and others are listed in more detail below. At the end of each year the success of the projects is evaluated, also taking into account the results of MORI polls, which measures the consumption of fruit and vegetables in the area.

For more info on this project, just visit FOOD VISION

Food Vision toolkits

Food Vision toolkits provide more detailed information and guidance about specific types of initiative, such as farmers’ markets or local food strategies, or settings for food work such as schools or workplaces. They draw together good practice from a number of local and regional initiatives in delivering a particular project. In general the toolkits aim to provide an overview of what is involved in setting up a food project, covering areas such as benefits, policy, legislation, as well as links to other useful websites.

Just visit them here!

A Web App to Empower Urban Food Communities

CITIES is a European urban research institute who, in late 2010, began work on a pilot project which aimed to ‘empower and support the creation of a local food system’. With the pilot deemed a success, CITIES have unveiled farmingthecity.net – an online tool which showcases urban agriculture projects in Amsterdam.Projects are displayed on an interactive map alongside case study information. This includes type of project (commercial, community, innovation), status (start-up, on-going, completed) and position within the local food system (sourcing, preparation, distribution, consumption). Farming the City aims to encourage the development of local food systems:
Local food systems build place-based, self-reliant food economies in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution and consumption come together to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular place. They provide employment, generate income and support social equity.The broader issue of urban land use is also integral to the project, with detailed information on trends and local issues available on the site. By addressing common challenges and providing a venue for urban agriculture information, Farming the City aims to encourage knowledge sharing among urban farmers.
Food prices in Europe hit a record high in 2011, yet urban agriculture opportunities are still not being maximised. By reimagining green space and neglected areas, we can create more sustainable cities. Farming the City is currently Amsterdam-specific, but the concept clearly has potential for global application. If you’re based in Amsterdam and have an urban agriculture project to contribute, click the image below to join in. The wealth of information and inspiring case studies are enough of a reason for non-Amsterdam residents to visit too, so check it out – it might just encourage your own urban agriculture revolution.

Source: Sustainablecitiescollective.com