Welcome to Healthy Food for All

Healthy Food for All is an all-island initiative seeking to combat food poverty by promoting access, availability and affordability of healthy food for low-income groups. 

This website is designed to act as an information and networking resource for anyone interested in food poverty and its relationship with food and nutrition policy, health inequalities, welfare adequacy, educational disadvantage, food production and distribution, retail planning and food safety.

Our key areas of work are:

• Community & School Food Initiatives
  
• Policy
  
• Networking

Footprints Women's Centre, Belfast One of the seven projects belonging to Demonstration Programme of Community Food Initiatives	Ear to The Ground Food Poverty The Limerick Seed to Plate Project and Healthy Food for All were featured in a wonderful piece on Ear to the Ground on 31st January, 2012.

Approximately 15% of the population experience some type of food deprivation according to EU-SILC figures.  Research into the affordability of healthy eating for low-income groups undertaken by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland found that families dependent on social welfare would have to spend one third of their weekly budget on food in order to obtain a healthy diet.  Even though low-income families spend a higher proportion of their income (23-25%) on food compared to other socio-economic groups (17%) they tend to have poorer nutritional intake.  The research found that it is up to ten times cheaper to provide calories in the form of unhealthy foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar than it is in the form of protective foods such as fruit and vegetables and other important foods such as lean meat and fish (FSAI, 2009)

Demonstration Programme of Community Food Initiatives

The Demonstration Programme is a three-year programme funded by safefood and managed by Healthy Food for All. The aim of the programme is to promote greater access and availability of healthy food in low-income areas through a variety of local projects using a community development approach. More info.

Social Enterprise Networking Event

The Demonstration Programme celebrated its seventh networking event in The Reco in Ballymun on 15th February, 2012. The event focused on Social Enterprise and the training and presentation provided an overview of what social enterprise means and a seven stage model for its development. Participants also enjoyed a presentation by Group exercises explored ways the CFIs might adapt social enterprise ideas to their own projects. Participants enjoyed a delicious lunch in The Reco Community Cafe and a tour of the centre's gardening initiative. We would like to thank the speakers and the staff at The Reco for helping make the event the success it was. For more information please contact Georgina Buffini at gbuffini@healthyfoodforall.com.