Britain does not produce or import enough fruit and vegetables for its population to get the government-recommended five portions a day 400-gram intake, according to a newly published analysis by the Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems (SHEFS) research group which includes The Food Foundation.
Only one in ten children and a third of adults are eating enough fruit and vegetables. Even without taking waste into account, the UK would need to produce or import 9% more fruit and vegetables for everyone in the UK to be able to eat the recommended amount, says SHEFS, highlighting the need to increase production as well as consumption.
Much of our fertile farmland is used for animal agriculture – as grazing land or for crops to feed animals. People have turned away from traditional home-grown foods such as peas and carrots, and more than 80% of our fruit and almost half of our vegetables now come from imports, many of them exotic and tropical varieties that could not be grown in Britain.
Our dependence on imports from regions increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and water scarcity puts our food security at risk by exposing us to cost and supply fluctuation. Domestic growers, meanwhile, say their costs rose by 27% between March and October last year, threatening the future viability of their businesses.
The research by SHEFS shows that if everyone in the UK ate the recommended 400-gram a day fruit and vegetable intake, healthy life expectancy would increase by an average of eight months and diet-related greenhouse gas emissions would reduce by more than 8%.
And it points out that the high cost of fruit and vegetables is contributing to the health gap between rich and poor. In the year to October 2022, the price of fruit rose by more than 10% and vegetables by more than 15%, making fruit and vegetables ‘too expensive for many people to buy’.
The analysis adds: “Healthier foods are nearly three times as expensive per calorie as less healthy foods, meaning people switch away from purchasing fruit and vegetables when budgets are tight.
“Even before the cost-of-living crisis, consumption of fruit and vegetables showed strong, wealth-related differences – with the highest income groups consuming about 1.5 portions per day more than the lowest.”
Anna Taylor, executive director of The Food Foundation, says: “As the government takes forward the development of the Horticulture Strategy for England – which is now long overdue – we show it must aim to increase both production and consumption of British fruit and veg. This will make a significant difference to the nation’s health and help our farmers. It’s a win-win.”
Professor Rosemary Green of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who is a co-project lead of SHEFS, adds: “Our research is about identifying food system changes that would be beneficial for both people’s health and the environment.
“Increasing production and consumption of fruit and veg is vital to achieving these goals, and should be prioritised now.”
The SHEFS researchers say there are four key priorities for policy makers:
1. Supporting increased fruit and vegetable consumption - through initiatives such as sensory food education for young children and investing in TV and online advertising of fruit and vegetables.
They say that aligning diets with the Eatwell Guide and 5-a-day programme would contribute to both environmental and health outcomes as both offer important pathways for delivering both environmental and health outcomes.
A modelling study SHEFS developed showed that a shift towards diets that met five or more of the nine Eatwell Guide recommendations could not only reduce the risk of mortality in the UK by 7% but also lower UK dietary greenhouse gas emissions by 30%. Current UK diets on average meet only 3–4 of the recommendations.
Another study by the researchers modelled the impact of increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables to adhere to the 5-a-day standard (while reducing meat and sugar consumption) on health, the environment and affordability.
It found that increasing fruit and vegetable consumption would not only result in approximately a 7–8 month increase in healthy life expectancy in the UK, but would also translate to a 4%–8% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and up to a 1% reduction in water footprints.
“If consumers began eating five fruits and vegetables a day, they could contribute to 10%–31% of the target set out by the UK Climate Change Committee to reduce domestic land-based emissions by 37 megatons within 30 years.”
Both studies show that environmental and health benefits would be gained by replacing calories consumed through meat consumption with fruits and vegetables, particularly vegetables. Vegetables were considered to be a realistic replacement for meat in some meals, while fruit was considered as a replacement for sweet snacks.
Of the individual Eatwell guidelines, adherence to the recommendation on fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with the largest reduction in total mortality risk (10%) and increased adherence to the recommendation on red and processed meat consumption is associated with the largest decrease in environmental footprints.
2. Protecting low-income consumers – by expanding schemes such as Free School Meals and Healthy Start that provide a nutritional safety net for children, and by ensuring fruit and vegetables are available from ‘food desert’ convenience stores in areas of high social deprivation.
The SHEFS researchers say that replacing some meat production with horticulture in England could help assure future food security and deliver environmental and health outcomes, but will require a shift in consumer preferences.
“If the UK population were to adhere to the Eatwell guidelines, there would need to be an increase in the supply of fruits and vegetables. This could be achieved through increased domestic horticultural production, increased imports of fruits and vegetables, or by a combination of the two.
“The Government Food Strategy stated that the UK Government will support growth in the horticultural production sector in the UK to assure food security and healthier diets, including by development of a new horticulture strategy for England.
“This is a welcome approach as it will reduce the country’s reliance on fruit and vegetable imports from climate-vulnerable countries.”
The researchers also found that the proportion of fruit and vegetables supplied to the UK market from climate-vulnerable countries increased from 20% in 1987 to 32% in 2013. Reversing this trend could help to assure livelihoods for domestic farmers, while also safeguarding UK food security against the increasing shocks to production likely to be experienced by climate-vulnerable countries.
“Increasing domestic production of fruits and vegetables may also provide the added benefit of helping to meet biodiversity targets if some grazing land is converted to a mix of natural land covers and horticulture production,” say the researchers.
“Land use changes associated with healthier diets could also have benefits for biodiversity in the UK and potentially increase resilience to climate change. The biodiversity benefits in our model would occur largely because the dietary energy equivalent replacement of meat with vegetables has the potential to result in the use of less land for agricultural production, thereby freeing up land for alternative uses such as natural land covers.”
However, farmers are unlikely to shift to or increase horticultural production if they are not assured a market for what they grow. And consumption trends in the UK show a shift away from crops grown domestically.
Since 1987, the contribution of tropical fruits to UK diets has rapidly increased while that of more traditional vegetables, such as cabbages and carrots, has declined.
An analysis of food consumption data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey 2008–2019 indicates that consumers are interested in decreasing meat consumption as purchases of plant-based alternative foods are increasing to replace meat – but this is not translating into a wider shift to increased fruit and vegetable consumption.
If the aim is for a boost in domestic horticultural production to drive a boost in domestic fruit and vegetable consumption, a shift in consumer preferences and expectations on the ratio of imported to domestic fruits and vegetables consumed will also be required.
3. Boosting domestic fruit and vegetable supply - so UK fruit and vegetable supply chains are not unsustainably dependent on imports from countries likely to experience future climate and water stress, and greater consumer demand can be catered for.
To address this the recommendation is for the provision of relevant funding to diverse types of farming systems and manufacturers. The Government Food Strategy suggests it will support and promote the ‘three compartment model’ of intensification, land sparing and land sharing in its land use framework.
It also states this will be supported with investments in farming innovation to increase productivity. It is crucial that efforts to increase productivity, such as through the development of new farm machinery or research and development (R&D), take into consideration the different needs of low-input, organic and mixed farming systems.
Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption and reducing meat consumption is achievable at the same time as improving biodiversity if some grazing land is allocated to natural land covers.
However, to make these shifts in land use, environmental land management schemes will need to be designed to incentivise farmers accordingly, the research suggests.
“Ensuring funding and support flows equally to farms working in both the intensification/land sparing and the land sharing segments of the ‘three compartment model’ will have a significant long-term impact on the price of food coming out of these different farming systems,” the researchers say.
“Increased R&D and investment in these farming systems will bring down the costs of sustainably produced foods by increasing their productivity and contribute to making foods produced on these farms affordable to more consumers.”
4. Making better use of government – promoting cross-departmental working so the health and environmental benefits of greater fruit and vegetable production and consumption are realised, and to ensure all taxpayer-funded meals in schools, hospitals, prisons and government offices include two portions of vegetables, with fruit as an additional portion if used as a dessert.
Here the recommendation is to establish strong governance to ensure collaboration between departments and longevity of focus.
An analysis of food policymaking in England led by the SHEFS researchers showed that 16 government departments play a role in shaping food policy. In the Government Food Strategy, Defra (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) recognises that it is responsible for food policy and says it will ‘join-up within government to collectively drive progress’ to deliver the strategy.
But the researchers say there has been ‘very little discussion’ of Defra’s role in driving health outcomes.
“This indicates that limited collaboration with the DHSC, the Department of Education (DfE), the Food Standards Agency (FSA), etc. has been undertaken while developing this strategy.
“These departments function in siloes, with different priorities and objectives. This results in UK food policy, as in most other countries, being disparate and fragmented.
“SHEFS research has shown that there is the potential to achieve substantial co-benefits between environmental outcomes and achieving dietary guidelines. The DfE, FSA, and DHSC – particularly the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities – need to work collaboratively with Defra to successfully maximise these co-benefits in future food policies.”