Getting to a Good Food Nation: Priorities for the Public Sector

The food we eat has a huge impact on our quality of life: from increased attainment and longer lives, to a strengthened food sector and money saved through home cooking. With public bodies in line for enhanced powers and obligations around improving Scotland’s food culture and environment, join Holyrood as we examine the powers you have to transform Scotland into a Good Food Nation.

Getting to a Good Food Nation

‘Our aspiration is that Scotland is a Good Food Nation, a country where people from every walk of life take pride and pleasure in, and benefit from, the food they buy, serve, and eat’. These are the words that define the Scottish Government’s ambition for Scotland as part of their 2014 review of national food and drink policy’.
Becoming a Good Food Nation

Now, the Good Food Nation Bill seeks to turn these priorities into legislation. The scope of these policies for public bodies would span health and health education, planning, procurement, food waste, food education and social care and herald new ‘good food duties’ they would need to fulfil. With obesity costing the Scottish economy up to £4.6 billion per year and 43,962 children accessing emergency food supplies in 2016 there are clear deficiencies in the current food ecosystem.

With the Bill due to go out for consultation shorty, it is timely to look at the powers local bodies have, the powers they need, and the powers they want to tackle obesity, food waste, and food insecurity.

Key issues we’ll examine with you

• The Good Food Nation Bill in context – from reviews of food standards in schools and hospitals to the sugar tax
• Influencing the food environment within our communities
• Priorities for and importance of local authority procurement
• Tackling obesity and bad nutrition through opportunity and education
• Empowering communities through education, support, and the Communities Empowerment Act