Food justice

Ready Healthy Eat worked to pilot, deliver and evaluate ways to provide nutritious ready meals to people at risk of food poverty between 2020 and 2023.

The impact of nutritionally poor food is affecting the most vulnerable people the most. Children in poorer areas are almost twice as likely to be obese as those in more affluent areas. Local food projects work in these communities, delivering social impact by encouraging changes in people’s diets. They do this by teaching people about food, where it comes from, how to grow it and how to cook it.

Not everyone will want to or be able to take up these opportunities though. Local food projects are in a good position to move beyond growing and cooking, to affect the diets of people who, for different reasons, can’t or won’t cook and grow for themselves.

Four partners teamed up across the UK to deliver the Ready Healthy Eat work – Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, Cyrenians in Edinburgh, NOW in Belfast and The Hornbeam Centre in London. Coventry University evaluated the social impact of the project. Ready Healthy Eat aimed to show that ready cooked food doesn’t have to be a nutritionally poor, or unaffordable.

The Ready Healthy Eat partnership planned to pilot the following activities:

  1. A meals on wheels provision
  2. A holiday meals scheme for children
  3. Take away meal options for people who attend support services such as community meals, community cookery clubs and food banks
  4. Services specifically focused on people with learning difficulties and their carers

The programme ran from 2020 and ended in spring 2023.

Find out what we learnt: Reports and resources


Supported by The National Lottery Community Fund.

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