Healthy Eating Week 2022

It’s no secret that eating healthily isn’t cheap. Last year, The Food Foundation estimated that poorer households had to spend around 40% of their disposable income on food in order to meet the NHS’s Eatwell Guide. Since then, food prices have gone up an average of 6%, with many staple goods like pasta and meat shooting well beyond a 10% increase. With healthy food already costing three times more per calorie than unhealthy choices, healthy eating is perhaps more out of reach than it has ever been.

At Norfolk Community Foundation, we’re committed to empowering communities to creating sustainable solutions to face their biggest problems. Through funding, guidance and coordinating creative approaches, were getting healthy food back on the menu for the estimated 15,000 people in Norfolk who miss out meals each month because they cannot afford food.

Nourishing Norfolk

Following the successful pilot of The Burrell Shop food hub at The Charles Burrell Centre, Norfolk Community Foundation has launched the Nourishing Norfolk project. The food hubs are locally-run and locally-supported, sourcing their own food from a mixture of local and national food redistribution organisations, locally donated food, and nearby farmers. This means that unlike many foodbanks, Nourishing Norfolk’s food hubs offer fresh and frozen produce alongside tinned and packaged food. By offering food at highly discounted rates, the hubs mean people can shop with dignity and afford food that would otherwise be out of reach. Find out more about the hubs here.

Funding community projects

Healthy eating on a budget requires not only time and energy, but also a lot of know-how. Unfamiliarity with particular ingredients or methods can cut people off from exploring a more varied diet, but community projects like Top Banana in Great Yarmouth are challenging this. They used an Norfolk Community Foundation from East of England Co-op to provide family cooking courses in their community. This greatly improved people’s confidence in the kitchen around preparing basic healthy meals. Project leader Simon said: “One particularly successful session was the introduction of vegan chilli to older residents, who were at first very reluctant, but feedback has shown how much they enjoyed the meals and were keen to explore more meat free dishes.”