Welcome to Healthy Food for All

Healthy Food for All is an all-island multi-agency initiative which seeks 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

 

 

 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.

Sustainability Networking Event

We were delighted to celebrate our sixth networking event of the Demonstration Programme which took place on 21st September, 2011 in Footprints Women's Centre in Belfast. The event aimed to explore what sustainability means to the Programme CFIs and identify the current resources and capabilities within the projects that can be built on. It also aimed to identify how best the Demonstration Programme can provide support to the CFIs over the coming months to help achieve sustainability. If you would like more information please contact Eileen Wilson at eileen@footprintswomenscentre.com or Georgina Buffini at gbuffini@healthyfoodforall.com. For more news and updates on the Demonstration Programme please click here.