APPENDIX 34
Memorandum by Focus on Food (OB 58)
FOCUS ON
FOOD PERSONNEL:
Prue Leith, Chairman of the RSA Focus on Food
Campaign
Prue Leith is a well-known cook, food writer
and former restaurateur. She has been a columnist for the Daily
Mail, Sunday Express, the Guardian and the Daily
Mirror. She was the subject of two TV documentaries; The Best
of British on BBC 1 and Take Six Cooks on Channel 4. She has written
two novels, Leaving Patrick and Sisters, both published by Penguin.
Prue has been a non-executive director of British
Rail, Safeway plc, and Halifax plc and is currently on the board
of Whitbread plc and Woolworths Group plc. She is a former Chairman
of the Royal Society of Arts and is currently Vice-President.
She is Chair of Focus on Food. She is also Chair of the
Governors of Ashridge Management College and chairs 3E's Ltd which
has been awarded the first contracts to "turn round"
and run state schools.
She has received many honours, most notably
the OB E in 1989, Veuve Cliquot Business-Woman of the Year in
1990, and seven honorary degrees or Fellowships from UK Universities.
Anita Cormac, Director, Focus on Food
An experienced food teacher and teacher trainer,
Anita Cormac is Director of the RSA Focus on Food Campaign
and Co Director of The Design Dimension Educational Trust. She
taught for several years in secondary schools in London until
she was seconded to London University to gain a Masters Degree
in Art and Design in Education.
In association with Design Dimension, her work
includes originating and delivering a range of bespoke curriculum
development and teacher training programmes in schools nationally.
She is the author of specialist education materials for local
government, government departments and commercial organisations.
She maintains an active interest in primary
and secondary education, particularly food education and the support
of food teachers through training.
Roger Standen, Director, Design Dimension Educational
Trust
A former secondary teacher and General Inspector
of Education, Roger Standen is Director of the Design Dimension
Educational Trust and Co Director of the RSA Focus on Food
Campaign.
The Design Dimension Educational Trust is dedicated
to raising awareness and understanding of the role of design in
education, the arts, business and training. The Trust develops
curriculum initiatives focusing on design, in schools, and colleges.
Roger is a Trustee of the Halifax Education
Action Zone and of the Creativity Centre Educational Trust.
In addition, his responsibilities include the strategic
development of the cultural programme of Dean Clough, centre for
the arts, design, education and business.
FOCUS ON
FOOD
1. The Royal Society for the encouragement
of arts, manufactures and commerce (RSA) Focus on Food
Campaign is a national food education programme which is led and
managed by The Design Dimension Educational Trust. The Focus
on Food outreach services and supporting education materials
are provided free to schools.
2. Focus on Food, which is principally
funded by a retailer (Waitrose) and is co-sponsored by food and
education agencies, trusts, and foundations, works in primary
and secondary schools and supports teachers to deliver quality
practical food education as an integral part of the school curriculum.
3. The Campaign's outreach programme includes
highly effective teacher training sessions in cooking and cooking-related
pedagogic skills and cooking workshops for pupils that are linked
to learning in Design and Technology and personal, social and
health education. The programme inspires thousands of educators
and young people every year.
4. Focus on Food designed and delivered
the practical training element of the Department for Education
and Skills-funded Food Partnership Programme in partnership with
The British Nutrition Foundation and The Design and Technology
Association.
5. Focus on Food SCOTLAND involves
a pilot programme of continued professional development for teachers
which addresses diet and health issues in Scotland through the
preparation and cooking of food in schools. Focus on Food
SCOTLAND is funded by The Scottish Executive Health Department.
1. The Health implications of Obesity
6. The National Audit Office (NAO) evaluated
the prevalence and costs of obesity in England in some detail
in their report Tackling Obesity in England published in 2001.
(Tackling Obesity in England, Report by the Comptroller and Auditor
General, National Audit Office, February 2001, HC220).
7. We do not intend to duplicate that information
here, but we note that the NAO estimated that the direct costs
of obesity are "more likely to exceed than fall below our
estimate of £0.5 billion a year", and that the direct
costs in England "may be around £2 billion a year"
(Tackling Obesity in England, Report by the Comptroller and Auditor
General, National Audit Office, February 2001, HC220, P.16-17).
8. Modern medicine recognises that diet
can affect almost every aspect of health. The link between heart
disease and a poor diet has been known for some time. A similar
link between many forms of cancer and diet is also becoming established.
9. The Government has targeted heart disease
and cancer as the two "big killers". More recent research
indicates that the immune system itself may also be affected by
diet. A recent report on Health in England 1998 treated eating
a healthy diet as a straightforward indicator of good health itself.
(Health in England 1998: Investigating the Links between Social
Inequalities and Health (2000) Health Education Authority Office
of National Statistics)
10. To give some idea of the range of conditions
and co-morbidities that can be affected by diet the following
list of conditions was given in the British Medical Journal (James
et al 1997); anaemia, premature delivery, low birth weight or
disproportion, dental disease, eczema, asthma, insulin dependent
diabetes, obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, low high density
lipoprotein or high triglycerides, non-insulin dependent diabetes,
coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, cerebrovascular
disease, cancers of lung, stomach, oropharyngeal and oesophagus,
cataracts, and bone disease in elderly people. (James WPT et al
(1997) The contribution of Nutrition to Inequalities in Health,
British Medical Journal 314 1545-9)
11. The authors stated that the excess incidence
of these conditions especially among low income groups was linked
to poor diet. The aspects of poor diet which these authors singled
out as contributing to excess incidence were a low intake of fresh
vegetables and fruit and a high intake of salty energy dense foods.
12. From our own experience, teaching cooking
skills in primary and secondary schools in under-privileged areas
in the UK, we have seen at first hand the inability of families,
parents and children to fully understand and put into practice
the connection between good diet and good health.
13. Teachers in these schools are dedicated,
committed professionals who need all the help that Focus on
Food can provide.
2. Trends in Obesity
14. Focus on Food warmly welcomes
the commitment by the Government on targets to reduce inequalities
in health by 2010 so that by that date the gap in mortality between
manual groups and the rest of the population will be reduced by
10 per cent and to reduce by the same amount the gap between the
fifth of areas with the lowest life expectancy at birth and the
population as a whole.
15. Since the 1970s a huge volume of research
has attempted to explain the observed in-equalities in health.
Premature mortality and excess morbidity are frequently linked
to low income and low social class—almost every study in
both developed and poor nations has found this relationship.
16. What is less clear is what causes this
apparent link. Almost certainly no single factor or cause is at
work. Numerous contributory factors have been cited as playing
a role, among these is diet.
17. Given this pattern of the inequality
in health, it is not surprising that most health care systems
in developed countries tend to spend more of their resources on
treating those from lower income groups and lower social classes
than those with higher incomes and higher social classes.
3. What are the causes of the rise in obesity
in recent decades?
18. Technology has provided the means of
improving the production, presentation and the distribution of
food. It has also been responsible for deskilling, as regards
eradicating the need for people to prepare food, and for divorcing
individuals from food sources.
19. It is a sad fact of modern life that
many children cannot make the connection between cows and milk
or potatoes and chips. Ironically, technology, used in the mass
production of food, has created processed food and ready meals,
which in most cases are more expensive than comparative meals
made from raw ingredients.
20. People in low-income groups, who are
unable to cook, frequently spend a high percentage of their income
on ready prepared food.
21. Traditionally, health promotion has
focused on increasing people's knowledge in order to change attitudes
and behaviour. However, there is little point in exhorting individuals
to change their dietary behaviour if they do not have the skills
that will actually enable them to take control of their food lives.
22. Fine words need fine actions.
23. ocus on Food maintains that it is essential
that cooking is the vital ingredient or "fine action"
that facilitates individuals to adopt and maintain a healthy diet.
24. As cooking skills have declined, reliance
upon pre-prepared foods has led to an unwitting excess intake
of the very foods that cause health educators the most concern,
namely fats, sugars and salt coupled with insufficient intake
of the antioxidant components found in fruit and vegetables.
25. Knowledge and understanding of food,
its qualities and nutritive value, comes from direct hands-on
experience of knowing how to select, prepare and cook food. This
is the premise that underpins the work of the RSA Focus on
Food Campaign—the UK's foremost food education initiative.
26. The outreach programme is delivered
from the Focus on Food "Cooking Bus", a unique
high-tech mobile kitchen classroom, which is staffed by expert
teachers from mainstream education. The programme is backed by
teacher-focused education materials for classroom use.
27. Focus on Food's approach makes
a direct connection between what is eaten and longer-term health.
The initiative's work is set against a background of increasing
reliance on food prepared by others—in restaurants, takeaway
outlets and ready meals. It is also set against the decline in
the perceived value of practical food education—hands-on
cooking—in our schools.
4. What can be done about it?
28. There is no doubt that a multi-disciplined
approach must be adopted to help combat increasing rates of obesity,
but Focus on Food believes that one of the central core
elements of any integrated strategy on obesity must be to identify
and treat the root cause—laying the foundations for good
eating and good diet with our children. Good education = good
diet = good health.
29. The Government is committed to addressing
inequalities in health. Focus on Food believes that the
targets and objectives that are set by educationalists and health
promotion teams must be supported by access to knowledge, skills
and resources within the formal school curriculum and the wider
education community.
30.The establishment of training programmes
and systems that employ effective communication is key to the
successful deployment of available resources including the knowledge
and expertise of all stakeholders in the delivery of positive
health messages and action.
31. The Government's commitment to a wide-ranging
programme of action to improve health is indisputable, as is the
position of food as a determinant of health. Indeed, the epidemiological
evidence in respect of the contemporary diet makes depressing
reading. Food is a critical component of health inequalities.
32. There is a direct link between poor
diet and illnesses such as heart disease, some cancers, and the
epidemic rise of childhood obesity and related illnesses including
diabetes. All the experts agree—food-related health problems
are escalating and the population must reduce its overall intake
of fat, sugar and salt and increase consumption of fruit and vegetables,
oily fish and, for teenage girls, foods containing iron.
33. The Focus on Food Campaign advocates:
— Improvements in initial teacher training
to ensure that all, not a minority, of primary teachers are adequately
trained to teach food preparation and cooking skills.
— Improvements in the recruitment of
secondary food technology teachers.
— The provision of more courses for
improved Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the pedagogies
associated with cooking.
— Improved food teaching facilities
in schools.
— That all secondary schools to provide
cooking skills courses for all pupils.
— Funding for ingredients for cooking
in schools.
— Ofsted inspections to always include
food teaching and the implementation of whole-school approaches
to food in schools.
5. Are the institutional structures in place
to deliver an improvement?
34. It is not for Focus on Food to
comment on whether the institutional structures are in place—we
work with the many agencies already set up by the Departments
of Health and Education to ensure that the work of Focus on
Food continues to deliver an effective health conscious message
to schools, teachers, parents and children.
6. Recommendations for national and local
strategy
35. Any course of action for improvement
must always incorporate a policy of social inclusion and consistency
to ensure that all young people and adults have access to the
same level of knowledge, skills and resources.
36. Focus on Food is committed to
educating young people through cooking about the qualities of
food and nutrition and tackling variations in cooking skills education
generally through its outreach programme of teacher training and
pupil workshops. Its approach is wholly inclusive because the
Campaign's workshops achieve a constant standard and involve all
social groups.
37. During the period June—November
2002 almost 50% of requests to Focus on Food HQ for training
came from health promotions teams who wanted to improve their
effectiveness in schools and the community.
38. Focus on Food is at the vanguard
of quality practical food education in schools. However, its outreach
programme is spearheaded by a single Cooking Bus and there are
around 30,000 schools in the UK.
39. The waiting list for the Campaign's
Cooking Bus is seven and a half years. This desperate state of
affairs has prompted the Food Standards Agency to commission a
new Focus on Food Cooking Bus which will come into service
in September 2003.
40. Given the huge amount of support for
Focus on Food's work the Campaign is hopeful that it will
have secured the means to purchase and manage a fleet of Cooking
Buses by 2005.
Recommendations for action from Focus on Food
— Central Government funding for more
cooking buses.
— Improvements in initial teacher training
to ensure that all, not a minority, of primary teachers are adequately
trained to teach food preparation and cooking skills.
— Improvements in the recruitment of
secondary food technology teachers.
— The provision of more courses for
improved Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the pedagogies
associated with cooking.
— Improved food teaching facilities
in schools.
— That all secondary schools to provide
cooking skills courses for all pupils.
— Funding for ingredients for cooking
in schools.
— Ofsted inspections to always include
food teaching and the implementation of whole-school approaches
to food in schools.
41. We tend to equate skills shortages in
the UK with commercial ebb and flow, but our cooking skills shortage,
or general ignorance, as we should perhaps more properly categorise
the problem, is not confined to specific economic or social groups
and it will directly or indirectly affect each and every one of
us.
42. This skills deficiency is a time bomb
which has the capacity to decimate the health of our nation. We
are already feeling its ripples in accelerating numbers of obese
and diabetic children and we ignore it at our peril.
43. The Focus on Food Campaign's
potency in delivering culinary skills, pedagogic skills and achieving
hands-on relevance for health promotion work is undeniable. So
too, is the need for Government to inculcate cooking skills as
the vital ingredient in the delivery of dietary health promotion
programmes.
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