Food Standards Agency
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Listen to this siteWednesday 8 June 2005
Julia Unwin
National Federation of Women's Institutes' (NFWI) Annual General Meeting, Royal Albert Hall, London.
Thank you Madam Chairman, good morning ladies and gentlemen, and thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today.
If you've had a chance to look at the 90th Anniversary souvenir brochure, or the Annual Review that we've just seen adopted, you'll already know that the WI and the Food Standards Agency have an awful lot in common.
Where we differ, is that you have got 90 years' worth of experience, while the FSA has only been around for the last five years.
There's clearly a lot we can learn from you!
We've certainly benefited so far from your support and great depth of experience.
I like to think that we've made a promising start in our five years, and that's certainly the sense of much of the feedback we've been getting, including some very supportive feedback from you.
That's why I'm now - shamelessly - going to ask for your continued help and support. And I'd like to mention three areas where I think we could pool our efforts to make a bigger difference by working together.
Back to topMy first example is with teaching children about food. Not just about what to eat, but how to shop and how to prepare good food.
Because there are a lot of children now who don't have the first idea about any of this.
It's not an entirely new problem. But it has been very publicly, and powerfully, brought home recently by Jamie Oliver in his television series about school dinners.
The scene that struck me most was when he was asking primary school children in Durham what carrots and leeks were.
And most of the children didn't recognise what we would probably think of as everyday fruit and vegetables.
It's pretty hard to credit that children - in the North East of all places - don't know what a leek looks like.
And that illustrates one of the big problems we have today.
If so many children don't even know what a leek or carrot is, they're a long way from knowing what a healthy balanced diet is, let alone what to shop for or how to cook good food.
Children get bombarded by a whole load of confusing messages about what to eat - from schools, from advertising, from their friends and family.
Some children can't - or won't - eat a balanced diet at school.
And they may not get the chance to eat healthily at home either, for a whole range of reasons - most of which are no fault of their own.
Over the past few years we've put out some really good, and very practical advice, about healthy eating.
And our evidence - extensively researched - on the effect of food promotion on children, helped kick-start the debate that's been raging over the past year or so.
But, if we're honest, we've probably not made great inroads yet. And we have to do a whole lot more.
One of the biggest changes we can make, I think, is to get more involved at a local level, hearing from, and learning from people in the communities that need the help most. Finding out what's needed, what works, and giving people in socially deprived areas, not just in inner cities, but rural areas too, the sorts of opportunities that many of us take for granted.
It's an area where we are already working together, with some success, on the 'Get Cooking!' project.
Based on the results of the pilot schemes you've run in Wales, we've just launched a toolkit for teaching young people in the community about cooking and healthy eating.
And there's great potential for us to work more closely together through your 'Community Challenge' project. I'm very pleased that we're already in discussions about how we might do that.
Back to topMy second example is also a very practical project, and that's the Cooking Bus - which some of you may have seen on the way in this morning, parked across the road by the Albert Memorial.
The bus is basically a high-quality kitchen/classroom that packs away onto the back of a lorry for transporting between schools.
Since we launched it 18 months ago it has visited about 60 schools around the country, mainly in poorer areas, spending a week at each school and teaching over 6,000 children.
It has also trained over 700 teachers to help them carry on teaching healthy eating and food hygiene long after the bus has packed up and moved on to the next school.
The key to the bus, as I see it, is that it's hands-on, and the children get to do proper cooking - chopping up fresh fruit and vegetables, filling and folding pastry, and lots and lots of mixing and pouring.
And they absolutely love doing it - as you'll have chance to see over the lunch interval. We've arranged with the local schools for some of the children to visit the bus and we'll be showing the cooking lessons live on the big screens set up outside.
One of the problems, though, is that there are about 30,000 primary and secondary schools in the country. And only three Cooking Buses.
So there's currently a three-year waiting list for a visit.
Which is why I am absolutely delighted to announce today that your Board has agreed to a partnership with us to get another bus on the road.
Back to topThat brings me to my last example ' which is the work we've been doing jointly on salt.
At the launch of our Sid the Slug publicity campaign last September, Barbara Gill spoke passionately of the need to inform people about the risks of eating too much salt.
And of the need for industry to do more to cut down on the hidden salt in processed foods like bread and bacon, breakfast cereals and soups and the rest - the sorts of foods from which we get about three-quarters of all the salt we eat.
As well as publicising the 'too much salt is bad for your heart' message, we've been keeping up the pressure on the food industry to change their recipes.
And the two-pronged approach is working.
We've got commitments from all the big players in the food industry to keep on reducing salt content over the next five years.
And the follow-up research we've been doing on the 'Sid' campaign shows we've made a promising start.
We've seen an increase of over 70 per cent in the numbers of people who say they are making a special effort to cut down on salt.
That shows what can be done by working together, and there's more to follow.
We're currently working on the next phase of the publicity campaign, which will urge people to check food labels for salt content, and tell people about how much salt is too much.
We need your help to get the messages across in local communities, and there's going to be a cascade conference at Denman College in mid-October to discuss ways that you might be able to do that.
We need to encourage the people who say they're going to cut down on salt, to make sure that's what they actually do.
And the individual, personal approach can help make a real difference.
Back to topSome people talk about a whole generation for whom it's already too late to make much difference. A generation lost to the couch potato and junk food culture.
This, they say, could be the first generation for centuries to die at a younger age than their parents.
I don't see any point in challenging the predictions at this stage, or laying the blame.
But putting it right is a responsibility we all share.
We can't afford to waste any more time and condemn another generation to the same risks – the generation coming up through schools at the moment.
As our partner and ally, you can, and do, help enormously. Not least with your influence, and your opportunities to work directly with people at a practical level.
And, like all good friends, you can, and do, push us to do more ' and more quickly. And that's incredibly useful.
Your track record is an enviable one: 90 years of commitment to improving food and diet.
We're hoping to be around for the long term too - so that we can continue to make a difference together.
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