A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
Can We Fix a Food System Built for Quantity Not Quality?
The stark reality of our broken food system comes to life as Anna Taylor, Executive Director of the Food Foundation, sits down with Mark and Vic to unpack the findings from their eye-opening Broken Plate report. What emerges is a troubling picture of how our food environments systematically disadvantage those on lower incomes, creating a perfect storm of health inequalities.
Anna introduces us to the "three A's" framework—affordability, availability, and appeal—that shapes our relationship with food. The numbers are sobering: unhealthy calories cost half as much as healthy ones, creating an impossible situation for families trying to stretch limited budgets. For communities already struggling, the concentration of fast food outlets creates "food swamps" where nutritious options require extra time, money, and effort to access.
The economics driving these disparities make perfect business sense: unhealthy packaged foods have longer shelf lives, reducing waste and maximizing profits. Meanwhile, fresh produce with its inherent perishability represents a financial risk that many retailers in low-income areas simply cannot afford to take. Add sophisticated marketing tactics and the human biological drive toward energy-dense foods, and the deck is thoroughly stacked against healthy eating for those with limited means.
Most revealing is the debunking of persistent myths about cooking skills and knowledge. As Mark and Vic emphasize, their members demonstrate remarkable creativity and cooking prowess with the food they receive. The fundamental problems remain affordability and accessibility—when budgets are tight, families naturally gravitate toward "safe" food choices they know won't be rejected and wasted.
Looking ahead, the conversation turns hopeful with discussions about the 2025 Food Strategy and the potential for meaningful policy changes. What's needed isn't another lecture on cooking skills, but structural reforms that make nutritious food genuinely accessible and affordable for all communities. Join us for this crucial conversation about food justice, health inequalities, and the path toward a more equitable food system.
Welcome back to A Slice of Bread and Butter with Mark and Vic from the Bread and Butter Thing. We're a charity that delivers affordable food to the heart of struggling neighbourhoods, to help nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change.
Speaker 2:We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food.
Speaker 1:Food which means our members can save money on their shopping, feed their families healthily, as well as access other support to right in the heart of their communities yeah, and this is where we share a slice of life with somebody involved in bread and butter and hear about how they connect with us, and we're gonna have to buckle up this week because it's a bit of a geeky one. Anna taylor, who is the executive director of the Food Foundation, spoke to me about the broken plate report that they've just released, amongst many other things, so let's have a listen.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I am the executive director at the Food Foundation and we recently launched a report called the Broken Plate, which presents a set of metrics really on our food environments and how harmful they are and why they're particularly harmful if you've not got a lot of money. By food environments I mean really the points at which our food supply meets us as citizens and what happens in those settings and the extent to which eating well is made easy for us or made hard, and I think what we share in the report really is how hard it is for everybody, but doubly hard if you're on a low income.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and this is where we kind of cross it over, really, isn't it the Venn diagram of bread and butter in the Food Foundation? It's that access to affordable but, more importantly, nutritious food, and that's what we see the difficulty with too. So we see access and affordability in the same light. What I find really interesting about what you do as well is you go beyond that and get shouty about yeah, but the trouble is as well, everybody's putting marketing into this rubbish food as well yeah.
Speaker 3:So we look at the food environment basically through three main lenses. One is the price and affordability, what you might call access. So how does the good food compare to the less good food in terms of price, but also the extent to which just overall prices are affordable for people on a low income. So what proportion of disposable income you'd have to spend in order to afford a nutritious diet? And then the second lens is availability. So are those options actually available in the places where we're making decisions about what to eat? And what we show is perhaps not surprisingly is that, for example, if we look at what's available on the high street, this challenge of fast food outlets being really highly concentrated in more deprived parts of the country. So you might have a problem with affordability, but you might also have a problem with the fact that actually to be able to get to a place that sells cheap fruit and veg, you're a bus ride away. And then the last lens that we look through is what we call appeal. So it's really the three a's, overall appeal being what's being marketed to us, what are the foods that are the most convenient, what are the foods that are most presented to us as the most tasty. And again, as you say, all of that marketing spend is going on the foods that are less good for us. And this tiny proportion do you present of food and drink advertising spend going on fruit and veg, for example? And why do you think that is, anna?
Speaker 3:Well, at the moment the incentives that are in the system are such that it's basically a lot easier to make money from selling unhealthy foods.
Speaker 3:Basically, it goes right back to sort of subsidies in agriculture. So some of those very cheap, mass-produced ingredients are the core ingredients of some of these foods and that's where the agricultural subsidies and research has gone into. And you've also got our biology to act in the wrong direction as well, because we know increasing amounts now about what are the genes that we have which are linked to body weight, and there's hundreds of them. And if we as humans are put in environments where we are surrounded by energy dense foods, our biology for many of us points us in the direction of wanting to eat more of those foods. We're programmed to seek out those energy dense foods right back to our sort of genetic heritage of being hunter gatherers. So you combine those two things and we have a situation now where we've got huge numbers of people who are struggling with their weight. Know that it's not very good for their long-term health, but they're in these environments which are just making this an impossible challenge to try and deal with.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Couple that with a low income and you're a double trouble.
Speaker 1:Basically's really interesting because I I was talking to one of our hubs just outside manchester and it's run at a primary school and the head teacher there she was talking on this podcast actually about that very fact. She was saying she's got kids that are coming from deprived backgrounds that are presenting as obese because they're just eating entirely the wrong diet. They're struggling to actually access that diet but even when they do, the cheap calorific content is what they're getting. As a result, the kids are overweight yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, when you look back at then those measures I mean one of which is in broken plate we basically show we we tracked the price per calorie of foods over every year, of foods which are classified as unhealthy by the government versus foods which are classified as as healthy, and the unhealthy calories are half the price of the healthy calories, right?
Speaker 3:So if your money is tight and you're basically trying to fill up bellies at home and make sure your kids are satisfied, you go for those foods which are the cheapest ones and which are energy dense. What families also tell us is that I'm sure you hear this from some of your members is that people don't want to waste food if they've not got much money. There's no backups, like the kids eat this or there's nothing else, and that closes down your options to some extent, because you're going to be much less experimental with children particularly. You don't want to take that risk that they're not going to eat it and reject it. There's nothing else there. So you default to a slightly narrower range of things which you know are going to be eaten and they're going to fill kids up.
Speaker 1:They're fighting the losing battle because they're making the choices and then market forces are generating the food swamps and the takeaways and the cheap calories just flooding those socially deprived areas. Because Then you've got the challenge of well, I'm not going to stock this food because this food is fresh and it's perishable and it's going to go out of date before I've actually sold it. And it's at twice the price. It is for this packet of biscuits.
Speaker 3:That's right. The shelf life is a really important part of why it's easier to make money from these unhealthy foods. They stick around for longer and therefore you've got a lower level of wastage happening right across the supply chain. And also it's interesting because what the companies do is they have this measure called expandability, which they apply to different categories of food, which is basically how much more you can get people to buy of that category if you put it on promotion. Now, if you put like loo roll on promotion, there's only like a quite a narrow range of how much more loo roll you can use. Right, it's like or toothpaste or something like that but we saw the panic buying in coke chocolate bars.
Speaker 3:It's a whole different thing, you know. If you you think, oh look, it's a good deal, I'll get three for two, I'll take them home, they'll be there for later. Problem is they don't last when they're there, you end up actually eating a lot more of them and then going back for more. So the companies have sussed it all out beautifully and they have these very careful measures of expandability and throw all the promotions on those products which, again, you have this sort of full sense of like I'm saving money here, but you're not really. You're ending up buying more of them you just eat more yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Bad for your purse and bad for your waistline yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, there's some real science and technology behind this nowadays, isn't there? I know I was talking to megan blake recently about this and she was saying that one of the things that she's really interested in is the way the local authorities, the profit driven within their markets, whereas markets used to be looked at as local assets.
Speaker 3:That should be driving the right attitudes and accessibility for fresh produce, for example yeah, it's a tragedy really that we've lost so many street markets because, as you say, they have in the past and they do in other countries in europe play a really important role in getting fresh produce from farms to consumers in an affordable way.
Speaker 1:So, the other country is still lucky to, rather than it being profit driven, being more socially driven or health driven.
Speaker 3:What we do see in a number of those countries is a much more concerted effort by government policymakers to protect traditional food culture, to protect smaller growers and all that kind of goes with that around the value that we place on on what we eat and where it comes from, and something which we just we haven't seen here. We've seen this sort of rush really to welcome in supermarkets because they offer cheap, mass produced food, but at a price which I think has meant that we've sacrificed a lot of our traditional food culture and it's quite a lot of effort to try and rekindle it again now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can see the struggle. It's a real uphill battle. That one, yeah, okay. So that leads nicely onto the food strategy then doesn't it, of 2025. What do you think we could expect from DEFRA and the team? What should we be asking for from them?
Speaker 3:What's interesting is that we're hearing from DEFRA a lot more concern about public health and the food system, which is new. In the past DEFRA has been, you know, pretty solely focused on farming and the food industry and left health issues to the Department of Health. So that's kind of interesting. I mean, I think we should be expecting from the food strategy a significant step forward in terms of the regulation of these food environments which have become so damaging. Obviously, the government has committed to keep on track the advertising regulations which the last government got onto the statute and which will come into force in October of this year, which is good, but that's really one of many things that needs to happen around food environments.
Speaker 3:I think bigger and more exciting opportunity is the potential that the food strategy could introduce some primary legislation, so essentially like an act of government, that would really set out the long-term goals of the food system. So if we think about this in a historical perspective, when we came out of World War II, the sort of core goal really of the food system was to avoid food shortages and famine. That was what it was really geared up to do. All the investment etc. Policy measures were about making that happen and that's been an overriding success is that kind of what we're paying for now?
Speaker 3:yeah, it came with a whole load of unintended consequences, which now we need to try and fix, and so we need to actually say, okay, we still don't want to have food shortages and famine, obviously that's a given, but we also need a food system that's going to protect public health and our environment, our natural environment, and set out a set of things that we would measure to know whether or not we're moving in the right direction.
Speaker 3:One measure of that might be around the affordability of nutritious foods, for example, which we would ask government to track, and in the way that the Climate Change Committee holds the government to account on progress towards net zero. You know you would try and set up some similar arrangement where the government could be held accountable to those commitments and, in turn, the government, of course, set expectations of the private sector in terms of their contribution, which, in this instance, is really significant in terms of shaping health outcomes through the food that they have on offer and how they market it. So that's the big prize, in my view, and something that we'll be really pushing DEFRA on. You know, these kinds of things you've got to try and do them earlier, in a government term, so we hope that Steve Reid will have that ambition, but it's yet to be seen.
Speaker 1:We are trying our level best, as I'm sure you are. Anna had to actually try and get a seat at the table the food strategy just to actually bang the drum about affordable nutritious food, because that is super important. And when the announcement came out I was a little bit concerned because it was like twofold yes, it's important to have affordable nutritious food for low-income homes, but at the same time, it's important to have fair prices for farmers and it's really difficult to look at the economics of how the two measure up.
Speaker 3:That's right. The challenge for government is to really work out how you can rebalance the prices in the system and rebalance those sort of taxes and subsidies so that the end result is that you don't have an overall impact on the cost of the basket, but you've got more affordable, nutritious foods with fairly paid farmers and more expensive really.
Speaker 1:So a higher sugar tax is, for example, more stuff than fresh produce.
Speaker 3:Exactly Use the revenue to subsidise the good stuff, particularly in a targeted way for lower income families, which would make the most sense. You can do that, of course, through Healthy Starts, through Free School Meals a whole stack of ways in which you can provide that subsidy.
Speaker 1:So I like the three A's afford, availability and appeal. I think they really align with what we're about, particularly the first two, obviously affordability and availability. We always talk about access to affordable, nutritious food, so I thought it was really good to see how we align and how we can get the strength of somebody like the Food Foundation behind us as well then to keep pushing the same cause.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and it's interesting because recently there's been a few occasions where they've had a piece of work, really useful information, trying to shape policy, but then they've needed a human interest story to bring that to life and we've worked together to kind of introduce them to our members, to support that.
Speaker 1:So it's good yeah, we're always on the same page, right? So they're always looking for people that are struggling with food insecurity and this cheap energy dense food or ultra processed foods and calorific food that is just so cheap in comparison to healthy food yeah, and more, available in many of the communities that we work in sad but true.
Speaker 1:It's a stark truth, right? So it's just all over the place. There's nothing that changes in those low-income communities, in the stores and I think anna said it herself, didn't she that the trouble is they just last forever and they're cheap as chips yeah, totally, and it's not giving people the choice, is it so we know that people would like to eat more healthily, but they can't afford to or it's not available.
Speaker 2:So how do we combat that, really, other than setting up a bread and butter club everywhere?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's tricky and I I think one of the things that we have to get beyond, which is a really difficult one, and it's tricky and I think one of the things that we have to get beyond which is a really difficult one, and it's not particularly something that Anna mentioned, but how many times have you been to?
Speaker 2:local authority or government. Vic Harper and somebody said to you that and we asked in the survey the first survey that I was involved in and 80-odd percent of people came back and said, no, our cooking's fine, it's all good yeah.
Speaker 1:Note to policymakers people can cook. It's affordability and access. That's the problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and especially our members, because realistically they do a ready, steady cook with their bags every week, so they're really creative.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. This isn't painting by numbers, is it? This is absolutely looking at, so one of the things that came out really clearly was about.
Speaker 2:You limit your diet for the safe foods when you can't afford and we've said about this on previous episodes but you wouldn't take a risk with your shopping when you've only got. You've got such a finite budget and you're going to focus on those unhealthy calories and then that has an impact on health. So it's really clear policymakers don't seem to want to solve the actual problem. They'll treat the symptom the diabetes, the obesity when actually, if there was better food available for people, there might be lesser instances of some of those health issues.
Speaker 1:Couldn't agree more. I don't think I'd realized as clear as what Anna put it, that we're actually programmed that way as well, just to eat as many calories as possible, because actually we're still in survival mode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, apart from we've seen from our members that actually when they're food insecure, they start to do the food hoarding. Yeah, and that came out this year more than ever, I think, where people might have a bit more food for one day, but they don't know what the next day is going to look like or the next week, so they still keep themselves eating really limited diet because of the rainy day kind of stock that they need to have in the cupboards and then going on to all the other stuff that we talked about with access when we were chatting with Anna and the stuff that Megan Blake was going access when we were chatting with anna and the stuff that megan blake was going on about.
Speaker 1:And megan, who always helps us from sheffield university, she looks at our data for the survey, etc. But she's also in the thick of food insecurity and landscape, should we say, when she's looking at how markets are no longer driven for the common good but just pound, shilling and pence and profit driven again, and how that's changing the face of high street markets or even eradicating them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but even the high street has changed. Yeah, I remember when I was little and you used to go to the butcher and the green grocer and you'd do lots of little shops to get everything and they're not available, you know, even on the high street street, let alone the market yeah, it's tricky, isn't it?
Speaker 1:because that that was the way, but economies of scale, etc.
Speaker 2:Put them all out of business yeah particularly where we need the most in, in these kind of low-income communities I think that's the key thing, because it's all good and well having the big supermarkets, but if they're not near you, or it's a bush journey to them, or that makes your shop a lot harder, doesn't it? So it does.
Speaker 1:Having it local is really important agreed, so you know how I like throwing curveballs at you vick during these things.
Speaker 2:I saw the eye roll. I was gonna say did everyone see the eye roll?
Speaker 1:maybe you could do an explainer to tell everybody what the food strategy 2025 is.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that's mean Okay. So a while ago Henry Dimbleby did a food strategy which set out a load of recommendations, and then the government changed, and then For a bonus point.
Speaker 1:Could you actually say when?
Speaker 2:Ooh 23. Close 21. Oh, oh, was it that long ago I know wow. So not much happened with that report. It's been sat on a shelf gathering dust, clearly, for the last four years, and the new government's decided that we should have another food strategy, essentially thinking about the security of food, thinking about kind of how to make farmers be paid more fairly, but also that food is accessible at an affordable rate, and so that's quite an ask to do both, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they're in the process of developing this. This is DEFRA that's doing the work, and they've pulled together a panel of experts to help take it forward. Sadly, no one from the redistribution sector is on that panel of experts, which feels like a bit of an omission.
Speaker 1:The voice of the low-income communities is incredibly lacking in that space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it'll be interesting to see whether it's quite an academic exercise or whether it's actually something that can be implemented and deliver. We'll get to find this out at some point in the near future.
Speaker 1:But in the meantime we will try our very best to try, and I almost said shout.
Speaker 2:But we're not going to shout, we're going to write quite often to them yeah, yeah, to try and influence it and see if we can help shape it, because we represent a lot of members. Now, around about a hundred thousand families, households, shop with us. It's quite a big voice, really, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I'd like to think so so if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, you can find us at team tbbt, on instagram, tiktok twitter and on linkedin or online at bread and butter thingorg. Do I sound like a radio jingle now?
Speaker 2:No, it was the TikTok, you slipped it in, slipped it in. Yeah, and if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast or would like to come and be our guest, drop us an email at podcast at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 1:Lastly, we're always open to new members at all of our hubs, so if you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, you can find your nearest hub on the become a member page of the website and please do all the things that podcasts ask you to do.
Speaker 2:Like us, subscribe, leave us a review, share us with your friends and have a chat about us on social yep, big thanks to anna for doing that, and we'll see you next time see, ya, thank you.
