Food & Health Alliance

The task of improving Scottish people’s eating habits and reducing obesity is a hugely challenging one. But often the problem is not so much a dearth of initiatives as the fact that they can be small-scale, short-lived and operating in isolation from each other.

Two years ago the Edinburgh Food and Health Training Hub was set up in the country’s capital city to try to address exactly that problem.

“There was a lot of food and health work going on in Edinburgh,” explains co-ordinator Lyndsey McLellan, “but there wasn’t a good way of networking and joining all those bits of work together.

“There were also a lot of organisations such as community centres that wanted to deliver healthier food but didn’t have the confidence, skills or equipment to do this themselves.”

One purpose of the training hub is to help to raise the profile of these small voluntary groups as well as providing support and putting people in touch with each other.

It’s also a matter of spotting gaps in provision and then thinking up imaginative – and affordable – ways of filling them. For instance, there aren’t enough kitchens to cater for all the cooking classes being requested but building new kitchens is out of the question. The solution has been to buy seven table top ovens to be lent out, free of charge, to any organisation wishing to use them.

In the last year the Hub has also been seeking to address another gap in provision – healthy eating for older people.

It has now produced a healthy eating resource book, aimed specifically at older people. The booklet offers advice on healthy eating, simple recipes and tips on how to get started. This will be backed up by a series of train the trainer sessions, due to begin next spring, which will help community centre staff spread the message.

“There is a big need out there and I’m under no illusion this will solve it all,” says Lyndsey. “But this is a start in getting people talking about these things a bit more. This is creating that conversation.”

The Hub has also helped to establish a network of community cafes around the city. Of the 30 cafes in the scheme, five have now received the healthyliving award and another five are well on their way, according to Lyndsey.

Most of these establishments predate the Hub but Lyndsey and her team have helped raise the profile of healthy eating within the cafes as well as forging closer links. The cafes are now in regular contact with each other and hold face-to-face meetings every two months.

She accepts that not all the cafes place a high premium on healthy food but all provide “a welcoming social space for everyone in the community” and that should not be under-estimated. “A lot of older people are malnourished so just getting a warm meal into someone can be half the battle. We always aim for the gold standard but if we get something slightly better than what we had before, then that’s progress.”

The Hub also gives healthy eating support to younger carers and has in the last two years put on a total of 20 cooking classes, supported 28 food and hygiene and food and health courses and run a number of train the trainer sessions. In addition it distributes a bi-monthly newsletter and provides advice and support to local groups.

As to the future Lyndsey hopes to expand work with both older and younger people as well as increasing support to BME groups and extending the train the trainer courses - but all this depends on money. At the moment the Hub only has guaranteed funding until the end of March 2012.

She is optimistic that the work of so many dedicated volunteers and professionals will have an impact on the city’s health while acknowledging that the counter-pressures to eat unhealthily remain considerable. As she says, “All of us in this field do this work because we think we’re making a difference. If we didn’t think that we’d be in a different business.”

Contact details: lmclellan@edinburghcommunityfood.org.uk