A FRUIT and vegetable voucher scheme and promoting the use of more fish in our diets are among a Devon university’s initiatives that feature in newly-published evidence aimed at making the nation’s food healthier, fairer and greener.

The evidence is the culmination of the £47.5 million Transforming UK Food Systems (TUKFS) project, which set out to transform the UK food system by placing healthy people and a healthy natural environment at its centre.

The results have been published in a special issue of the Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions B, titled Transforming terrestrial food systems for human and planetary health.

It makes 27 recommendations that offer practical routes for governments, retailers, caterers, researchers and communities to act now while building capacity for long-term systems change.

The report references three projects developed and delivered at the University of Plymouth, as part of ongoing work to ensure everyone in the city has opportunities to access sustainable sources of healthy food regardless of their circumstances.

All the projects are led by Dr Clare Pettinger, Associate Professor in Public Health Dietetics, who is actively engaged in community-focussed research around food systems, poverty and social justice.

Dr Pettinger said: ‘The importance of food to society is often underestimated.

‘It is much more than simply ensuring people don’t go hungry – food fosters a sense of community spirit, empowerment and social connection.

‘From the work we have done in Plymouth, we know there are whole areas of the city whose access to healthy and affordable food is limited.

‘The initiatives we have developed in conjunction with local residents and organisations have gone some way to changing that – and people’s perceptions – and if they can be rolled out on a national scale that would be amazing’.

The projects referenced in the new evidence include The Plymouth Fish Finger, which was funded through TUKFS’ FoodSEqual Plymouth programme and aims to increase fish intake for local residents while also making use of low-value and underutilised species caught by the city’s fishing industry.

Based on its success, the report called on local and national governments to support place-based supply chain innovation and social enterprise, incorporating community action to increase effectiveness and uptake.

There is also the Fresh Street Community project, a voucher scheme delivered in Whitleigh which gave communities access to fortnightly fruit and vegetable parcels and has seen an increase in healthy food consumption.

The report included a recommendation to expand voucher schemes to subsidise costs, making healthy and sustainable food more affordable and accessible to low-income households.

It also recommended making co-production the default process for decision-making that impacts on communities, as a means of better engaging local residents in food related discussions and innovations.