Healthy food for all

Giving citizens of Gateshead the power and  resources to demand that healthier food is made more affordable, appealing and accessible

Healthier foods are two to three times more expensive per calorie than less healthy foods. Those living with food insecurity are less likely to have a healthy dietary pattern, and more likely to experience disordered eating, suffer nutrient deficiencies, and experience barriers to planning, cooking and eating healthy foods. Food inflation has risen dramatically in the past year, with staple and healthy items most affected. 

Even when we can afford to get to the shops, our food environments are set up against us and our health. Marketing strategies lead us to ultra processed, high in salt, fat and sugar products that are often cheaper than healthier alternatives. Diet-related disease is now the second highest cause of preventable early death after smoking. Healthy life expectancy in Felling, East Gateshead, is almost 15 years lower than in Whickham South. 

Surveys have found that just over half of adults in Gateshead eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables. Children eat less, with just one in four aged 8-11 and one in six aged 12-15 eating recommended amounts.

Around a third of Gateshead's school children eat crisps, sweets or chocolate on most days. 37.9% of children in year 6 in Gateshead have obesity or are overweight. 68.4% of adults are reported as living with obesity.

Obesity for children in the most deprived areas continues to be more than double that of those in the least deprived areas. 

Skills4Work

Skills4Work Gateshead supports young adults 18 - 30 years with a learning condition to gain valuable skills in work, through support and wellbeing groups, sports and social groups, work place visits, and employment support.

Skills4work identified in a survey of their current young adults that 90% felt they had no choice in their meals and many had at least 3 take-away meals per week, saying “it is not only a huge cost but also the unhealthy fast food diet is not a treat but a way of life”. 

Their “Healthy food, my choice” project will be producing videos, cooking skills sessions, and working with young families to develop links with a community garden.

All aimed at building confidence in young people, encouraging them to try and enjoy new foods they have grown and cooked themselves. 

In 2015, Gateshead Council put planning rules in place which looked to reduce the influence of unhealthy hot food takeaways in Gateshead, with one aim amongst others to reduce childhood obesity levels within the borough. 

Planning permission for a hot food takeaway will not be given, for example, where children and young people congregate; where high levels of obesity are recorded; or where clustering of hot food takeaways will have a negative impact on the vitality of the local area.

This has been a great success: there are currently no locations where opening a new hot food takeaway would be suitable in Gateshead, and since the planning document was adopted, no new planning applications for hot food takeaways have been approved.

For the 5 years preceding the SPD there was approx 50 applications for HFT and approx 30 were approved. In the 5 years after there were approx. 20 and none approved. There have been 8 appeals and all were dismissed with 6/8 of the appeals citing obesity as the main reason for dismissal.

The number of HFT establishments are decreasing with 11 of the wards in Gateshead having below the UK average numbers.