The Food Foundation Podcast

Anna Taylor, Executive Director of The Food Foundation on the thrilling news this week from Government on the expansion of free school meals. From September 2026, all children in England who are in households eligible for Universal Credit, will become eligible for free school meals. Anna explains what that means to around half a million additional children from early years settings right through to sixth form, and to the health and wealth of the nation.Click here for the Food Foundation Manifesto and here to sign up for the newsletter.

Rebecca Tobi, Senior Business and Investor Engagement Manager at the Food Foundation hosts a panel discussion to discuss meat consumption in the UK to coincide with the launch of a new Food Foundation briefing Meat Facts, published this week,which really delves into who in the UK is eating what meat, what type of meat are we all eating, and where are we eating it.The panel comprises: Sarah Wakefield, Executive Director at the Eating Better Alliance, Sophie Bauer, Head of Food System Transformation at WWF, Mark Breen, Senior Creative Partner at the environmental charity, Hubbub, and Dr Shireen Kasam, Consultant Haematologist and honorary Senior Lecturer at King's College Hospital, London, and founder of Plant Based Health Professionals UK. Click on the links below for more information on meat consumption and why we need to care, and here for the Food Foundation report, Meat Factshttps://foodfoundation.org.uk/publication/how-uks-supermarkets-stack-climate-change-commitmentshttps://foodfoundation.org.uk/publication/low-hanging-fruit-policy-pathway-boosting-uptake-plant-rich-dietsClick here for the Food Foundation Manifesto and here to sign up for the newsletter.

In this week's Pod Bite, Hannah Brinsden, head of policy and advocacy at the Food Foundation, tells us about our new report on early years nutrition.This report is the third in the series conducting an in-depth study on early years food and nutrition to investigate how the food system and food policy is contributing to the high levels of overweight and obesity in early childhood.Click here for the Food Foundation Manifesto and here to sign up for the newsletter.

Sonia Pombo, head of impact and research at Action on Salt, tells us about the charity's latest research published for Salt Awareness Week from May 12-18th, highlighting salt levels in ready meals and six ways we can reduce our salt intake.Click here for more information on Salt Awareness Week, here the Food Foundation Manifesto and here to sign up for the newsletter.

Jessica Sinclair Taylor, Deputy Director of Feedback, on its new Retailer Targets report, Commitment Issues; Why UK retailers climate commitments are failing to deliver and what can be done to fix it. The research, commissioned by Feedback and The Food Foundation shows that despite the UK's 10 major supermarkets making a climate commitment every six days – they are failing against own promises.Click here for the report, the Food Foundation Manifesto, here for its report Low Hanging Fruit, and here to sign up for the newsletter.  

Alice English, Project Officer in the Business and Policy team at the Food Foundation tells us about a new policy pathway we have published this week in collaboration with Green Alliance and the Good Food Institute. Low Hanging Fruit is a set of pragmatic and easily implementable policy recommendations to boost plant-rich diets in the UK.Click here for more information on Low Hanging Fruit, the Food Foundation Manifesto and here to sign up for the newsletter.

Lucy Heyderman, Citizen Engagement Manager at the Food Foundation and Yusuf Shobair, one of our Young Food Ambassadors introduce The Food Activist Toolkit which helps young people find their voice and make real change in the food system.Click here to find out more about the Toolkit, here for the Food Foundation Manifesto and here to sign up for the newsletter.

Pete Smith, Professor of Global Change and Soils at the University of Aberdeen tells us about the Climate Inflation Project on how climate change affects food inflation causing food price spikes around the world, and how that affects people in the UK's most disadvantaged communities. Click here for more information on the project, here for the Food Foundation Manifesto and here to sign up for the newsletter.

Keira, one of the young food ambassadors at the Food Foundation, is with a panel of experts to find out about Auto Enrolment on Free School Meals. They explore how it can help the 250,000 children who are entitled to a free school meals but are missing out because of the barriers to registering.Professor Maria Bryant, researcher on Fix Our Food, the University of York's five-year research programme is joined by Myles Bremner, CEO of Bremner and co and a partner on the project, Peter Lamb MP, Councillor Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Deputy Chair of the Children and Young People's board at the Local Government Association and Rhett, a single father who reports from the front line of food poverty.Click on the links for more information on Fix our Food, the Food Foundation Manifesto and to sign up for the newsletter.